Prom 6: Verdi Requiem, with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Ryan Bancroft

Verdi
Messa da Requiem

Latonia Moore
soprano

Karen Cargill
mezzo-sporano

SeokJong Baek
tenor

Soloman Howard
bass

BBC National Chorus of Wales
Crouch End Festival Chorus

BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Ryan Bancroft
conductor

For anyone who still has problems with Verdi’s operatic tendencies in his Requiem Mass, the memorial the agnostic composer created for the fiercely Catholic philosopher-statesman Allesandro Manzoni, he or she need only slip into the Sistine Chapel and ponder the unabashed theatricality of Michelangelo’s sensational Last Judgment. And the significance of the work’s premiere in 1874 in the great church of San Marco in Milan, followed a few days later by its second performance in La Scala opera house will be lost on nobody. And, in this 150th anniversary performance, it was certainly not lost on Ryan Bancroft, a fine line-up of soloists, a huge (around 300) and cracking chorus, and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales on eviscerating form.

It was a performance that opened in incense-filled shadows, the chorus and orchestra producing a pianissimo you could feel more than hear, and closing with the soprano soloist slumping into a penitential parlando, as if praying for mercy as she falls to her knees before the Blessed Virgin – she didn’t of course, but it felt as though she could have. With a skillfully graded gathering of volume and light, the opening slowly raised the curtain and took aim at that great moment when the four soloists, all of them experienced Verdi singers, lay out in turn their vocal credentials in the Kyries. 

The bass Solomon Howard was nobility itself, his sepulchral ‘Mors stupebit’ later trumped by an awe-inspiring ‘Confutatis’, then ending on a puzzlingly laboured decoration just before the ‘Dies irae’ chorus resumed control. And it wasn’t until the tenor SeokJong Baek launched into the ‘Ingemisco’ that text and music joined forces in some highly expressive and full-toned singing. Perhaps Baek overplays Italianate scoops up to the note, but his sound and stage presence were irresistible. Words also meant something to the mezzo Karen Cargill, who injected her ‘Liber scriptus’ and ‘Recordare’ sections with a rare and inward Erda-like gravitas, carefully guiding her sumptuous voice near to silence. The soprano Latonia Moore went for the drama with a will, via some choppy phrasing and moments of unruly pitch, but as she navigated – without the score and theatrically turning to face the chorus to spur them on – the build-up of the ‘Libera me’ finale, her huge voice certainly owned the climactic top C, possibly with room for more. The ensemble work was sometimes a bit wilful, but was tight enough for a rapt ‘Agnus Dei’ with Moore’s vocal line subtly shadowed by Cargill’s an octave lower.

With an ineffable responsiveness, the two choruses might have been singing from memory as they moved effortlessly from softest prayer to the cosmos-filling terror of the ‘Dies irae’ and ‘Rex tremendae. The BBCNOW were entirely at one with the detail and panache of Verdi’s stupendous canvas – with a wonderfully bleak, neutral bassoon solo from Jaraslaw Augustyniak in the ‘Quid sum miser’ – and the brass were unsparing in the ‘Tuba mirum’ with a generous off-stage contribution. Their Principal Conductor Ryan Bancroft was as much director as conductor, marshalling his forces with uncanny immediacy, and his ear for the design of the various climaxes and retreats in the ‘Dies irae’ sequence delivered a powerful ‘Lacrymosa’ as the stone closes the tomb.