Master Chorale of South Florida

MUSIC REVIEW

Boca Philharmonic, Master Chorale give magnificent rendition of Brahms

By David Fleshler
Sun-Sentinel.com

April 16 , 2007

A setting of Biblical verses by a religious agnostic, Brahms' German Requiem offers consolation rather than triumph. Imbued with the glowing harmonies of the mid-19th century and grounded in the religious music of the past, the work received a magnificent performance Friday in Fort Lauderdale by the Master Chorale of South Florida and the Boca Raton Philharmonic Symphonia.

Led by artistic director Jo-Michael Scheibe, the chorus sang with clear articulation, unity and power. The orchestra, uneven in an earlier work on the program, performed with a full sound that balanced well with the chorus. The performance at Second Presbyterian Church captured the work's rugged intensity - the fearful awareness of the approach of death, the comfort for the living left behind and the promise of ultimate peace and joy.

The work contains two big examples of the fugue, an old-fashioned form even by Brahms' day, in which each voice enters separately on the same theme and proceeds independently to weave one great fabric of sound. In these sections, the performance avoided the twin danger of muddiness and monotony, building each fugue to triumphant climaxes that expressed hard-won victories over death.

In the solemn chorus Behold, all flesh is as the grass, Scheibe drew greater intensity to each repetition of the theme in the violins, over the ominous beating of the timpani. Baritone Keith Spencer brought a dark, expressive tone to Lord, Make Me to Know The Measure of My Days on Earth. Soprano Joyce Guyer sang her verses of maternal warmth with a sweet manner.

The concert opened with Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus, in memory of Jeffri Bantz, the chorale's associate director, who died last year at 52. A cleanly sung, clearly heartfelt performance, it was marred after the final notes - when there should have been a moment of silence - by one of the most ill-timed cell phone rings in recent concert history.

In the next work, Matthew Ferrell, the chorale's interim associate conductor, led the orchestra in Brahms' Haydn Variations. It was an energetic performance, skillfully building to a climactic ending. But the orchestra's weakness in strings was apparent. The violins don't blend well, largely due to poor intonation by some of the players. In the Requiem, the orchestra sounded much better, with a far more focused sound in the strings.