Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem in D Minor at SummerFest 2024
San Diego enjoys a robust choral music culture, from performances of major choral works by the San Diego Symphony with the San Diego Master Chorale and the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus, to programs presented by several local professional choirs as well as choruses sponsored by area colleges. So when La Jolla SummerFest presents a major choral work, I expect something beyond the standard choral repertoire.
Ludovic Morlot conducts Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem [photo (c.) Ken Jacques]
I still recall La Jolla SummerFest 2012’s astonishing presentation of Tan Dun’s Water Passion after St. Matthew at the La Jolla Playhouse’s Mandell Weiss Theatre. Although Gabriel Fauré’s beloved Requiem in D Minor is frequently encountered, the version now universally performed is a version for full orchestra that Fauré’s publisher required him to make in 1900.
Sunday at The Conrad, La Jolla SummerFest 2024 presented Fauré’s Requiem with forces scaled more to the proportions of his original 1888 composition: the vocal ensemble VOCES8 supported by a modest chamber ensemble of violas, cellos, and contrabass assisted by solo violin, harp, and organ.
My hopes that this performance of the Fauré Requiem would equal the reward of hearing the Tan Dun Passion were not realized.
Under the skilled direction of conductor Ludovic Morlot, SummerFest’s string ensemble provided the sonic warmth and sumptuous phrasing that this late Romantic work requires. But only in the softest moments of the Requiem did the eight vocalists of VOCES8 match their standard, and for much of the Requiem I was essentially imagining how this version of the Requiem would sound with a slightly larger and much warmer choral component.
The Requiem’s Sanctus and Hosanna provide its most thrilling moments, and while VOCES8 mustered a modest forte in this movement, it was very bright on top but lacking substance and breadth. Violinist Stefan Jackiw elegantly provided this movement its requisite descant.
Fauré made the soprano solo “Pie Jesu” a quiet prayer, which Andrea Haines endowed with gracious, beneficent phrasing. Baritone Christopher Moore strained to give the “Hostias” the ingratiating breadth and color that usually makes this the crowning moment of the Offertoire.
(l. to r. Stefan Jackiw & Sterling Elliott [Photo (c.) Ken Jacques]
Sunday’s program opened with Maurice Ravel’s rarely heard 1922 Sonata for Violin and Cello. Stefan Jackiw and cellist Sterling Elliott gave sympathetic command to Ravel’s sophisticated counterpoint and charged harmonic palette. From the gentle arabesques of the opening movement to the fiery pizzicato character of the scherzo, Jackiw and Elliott made a compelling case for this work Ravel dedicated to the memory of Claude Debussy.
An admirer of the music of Tchaikovsky, the slightly younger Russian composer Anton Arensky also displayed a remarkable gift for melodic invention. However, he lacked Tchaikovsky’s skill in structuring larger works, so most of Arensky’s music has fallen out of the standard repertory. HIs Piano Trio No. 1, however, is played from time to time, and Sunday’s program included the Trio performed by Inon Barnatan, violinist Blake Pouliot, and cellist Alisa Weilerstein. Although the Trio was written to honor a celebrated cellist of the time, Arensky gave abundant virtuoso licks to the piano, which Barnatan dispensed with his dependable panache. Weilerstein gave the profound, elegiac cello solo in the “Adagio” its due, and Pouliot proved the ideal match to these elite performers.
As a prelude to the Sunday program, Inon Barnatan and Alisa Weilerstein played the slow movement from Rachmaninoff’s Cello Sonata n G Minor to honor the memory of Joan Jacobs, a longtime patron of the La Jolla Music Society. Joan, along with her husband Irwin, is named in The Conrad’s second performance space, the JAI, the “Joan And Irwin.”
This concert was presented by the La Jolla Music Society as part of its SummerFest 2024 on Sunday, August 11, 2024, at La Jolla’s Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center.
Ken Herman, a classically trained pianist and organist, has covered music for the San Diego Union, the Los Angeles Times’ San Diego Edition, and for sandiego.com. He has won numerous awards, including first place for Live Performance and Opera Reviews in the 2017, the 2018, and the 2019 Excellence in Journalism Awards competition held by the San Diego Press Club. A Chicago native, he came to San Diego to pursue a graduate degree and stayed.Read more…