Even before Carlo Tenan raised his baton in Istanbul’s Atatürk Cultural Centre to begin his searing account of Mozart’s Requiem in D minor, there had been strong indications of what was to come. Not in the concert opener, Arvo Pärt’s Ein Wallfahrtslied (Pilgrim’s Song), a misnomer if ever there was one. With no sense whatever of a journey – still less of anything approximating a song – its mercifully brief music was little more than disoriented meandering, moving pointlessly in ever more monotonous circles.
However, as soon as Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music began, everything changed. Tenan and the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra transformed the piece from its usual sombre austerity to a world that was dark and surprisingly stormy, with its lyricism acting as a light half shining through the gloom. If anything, this was the real pilgrim’s song, its progress laboured and difficult, cleaving to the pulse’s unwavering metric, permanently uncomfortable yet determined to press on.
It served as the perfect processional to the Requiem which, Tenan made abundantly clear from the outset, was to be nothing less than tempestuous. Just as weighty but now driven along at speed, its opening music was anguished and desperate, articulated without any trace of the superficial beauty and gloss this work so often receives but instead a more authentic, edgy flow that, more than anything else, expressed hurt. The Kyrie became a literal imploring for mercy, turning white hot in Dies irae, yet despite such intensity the Hungarian National Choir projected absolute clarity, focusing the opening cries of Rex tremendae into sharp points of distressed praise.
The Recordare unfolded as a wild oscillation between light and shade, with a strong lyrical seam projected through the middle by the soloists, who executed the most lovely overlapping and dovetailing of their lines. Yet episodes like this were only short respites from the overarching act of more dire sentiments. The Confutatis was hectic and raw, its pulled-back conclusion sounding fittingly exhausted, practically slumping into the Lacrymosa where not so much light and shade as shade and even darker shade prevailed. However, as if acknowledging the extent of the musical agony, Tenan guided choir and orchestra to turn inward at its close, in what felt almost like an act of self-preservation.
As the performance continued, the relatively short relief found in the two Offertorium movements and the Benedictus came to sound like red herrings, or at best an overreaching optimism in the face of total calamity. Until, that is, we were plunged back to reality in the Agnus Dei, black and heavy-laden, sagging into fragility. All of which only made the melodic writing in the closing Communio more terribly poignant. The soloists stood as stark mouthpieces for the choral throng – with soprano Giuliana Gianfaldoni their most cutting advocate – focusing the communal despair into individual beacons of significant personal emotional gravity. However, Tenan’s excellent interpretation of the Requiem’s long-term narrative meant that such tenderness could only ever be short-lived. He hurled orchestra and voices as one back into a rapid frenzy, the choir practically howling their final supplications while the timpanist, zealous throughout but never more impactful than now, punctuated them like nails violently hammered into a coffin.
Simon’s press trip was funded by the Istanbul Music Festival.
