The San Brizio Chapel in Orvieto’s wondrous cathedral houses frescos by Luca Signorelli that both charm and chill; the saved disport themselves in a flower-decked Paradise while the damned are condemned to fall into hell and suffer all manner of cruel indignities. Verdi would have known them and other Renaissance depictions of The Day of Judgment and no doubt called them to mind when writing his own fresco in sound, his intensely dramatic Requiem, the piece chosen to begin the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir’s series of Choral Saturdays at the Royal Festival Hall.
But while the sound world is unmistakably Verdian, its structure is that of the Latin Mass for the Dead which, unlike Verdi's operas, puts the emphasis firmly on the chorus, not the soloists. The London Philharmonic Choir rose to the challenge and far exceeded it, singing with well-rehearsed precision and an exciting sense of drama, particularly in the repeated Dies irae sections, where they had to compete with fearsome fusillades from brass and percussion.
And while most large choirs can sing triple forte convincingly, few can produce the sort of clarity and balance that the LPC brought to the sotto voce passages, as in the beautiful Requiem aeternam section of the closing Libera me, or their whispered “Quantus tremor est futuris” of the Dies irae. With this quality of singing under artistic director Neville Creed this choir has surely won its place as the best of the London orchestra choruses.
While the choir was rock solid, conductor Edward Gardner – the LPO’s Principal Conductor Designate until he takes up the top job in 2021 – did not have an easy time marshalling his soloists. First, the South African soprano Elza van den Heever withdrew and was replaced by the Romanian Iulia Maria Dan. Then Armenian tenor Arsen Soghomonyan also withdrew. American Leonardo Capalbo was billed in his place, but fell ill on the day, so step forward English tenor Robert Murray, who did a heroic job at extremely short notice.