Prom 12: Academy of Santa Cecilia/Pappano – review Jul 21st 2013, 13:08
Royal Albert Hall, London
The Verdi bicentenary is badly served at this year's Proms. Half a concert of overtures and arias in September, with the occasional snippet elsewhere, is all we get of his operas. The only evening given over entirely to his music was this fine concert of rarities from the Chorus and Orchestra of the Academy of Santa Cecilia, under Antonio Pappano.
The main work was the Four Sacred Pieces, Verdi's last completed score and the final expression of his lifelong tussle with the idea of God. The performances were wonderfully shaped, beautifully detailed and strong on dramatic contrast, both within individual pieces and the sequence as a whole. The Stabat Mater's severity offset its tremendous, if fleeting, glimpse of Paradise, while the blazing central section of the Te Deum, with its electrifying shouts of "sanctus", threw its bleak ending into disquieting relief. Once past a tentative-sounding start in the Ave Maria, the choral singing was splendidly poised, in the unaccompanied Laudi above all.
The first half was given over to a striking series of curios. Pappano opened with a suave account of Carl Hermann's orchestral arrangement of the E minor String Quartet, Verdi's only chamber work, written in 1873 and thematically reminiscent of Aida and Simon Boccanegra. Maria Agresta, occasionally edgy in tone, was the soloist in the 1880 Ave Maria for soprano and orchestra, sometimes seen as a trial run for Desdemona's great prayer in Otello. Finally, we had the Libera Me from the 1869 Messa per Rossini, originally planned as a tribute by 12 composers to a great predecessor, and containing the basis not only of the corresponding movement in the Requiem, but the thematic essence of the entire later work. Playing and singing – Agresta was again the soloist – had an edge-of-your-seat intensity. Fascinating.
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Rating: 4/5
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