Verdi: Requiem with the Boston Philarmonic

Conducted by Benjamin Zander

April 24, 2016, 3:00 pm
Symphony Hall

301 Massachusetts Avenue
Boston MA 02118

Map

Chorus pro Musica accompanied the Boston Philharmonic in a triumphant performance of Verdi’s Requiem.

Day of wrath, that terrible day. So begins the medieval sequence that lies at the heart of Guiseppe Verdi’s Requiem. Verdi’s depiction of the Day of Judgment, and of man’s terror, as well as fortitude, in the face of it, is as viscerally charged and dramatically poignant as any scene from the greatest of his operas. The sacred and the secular meet in this most unusual of requiems. Verdi was not a religious man. He was acutely attuned to suffering in this world but not much concerned about what might come after. The four eloquent singers – one is tempted to say protagonists – declaim the words of the mass, but not as if preaching the word of the Lord. Rather, they depict, with sometimes harrowing explicitness, the very human reactions that they have to those words. Of all the really famous religious works of the past, the Verdi Requiem is perhaps the one most in tune with the temper of our times.

Boston Classical Review: “Chorus pro Musica… sang with energy and commitment.”

The Boston Globe: “Chorus pro Musica, under the direction of Jamie Kirsch, extended that operatic spirit, 120-plus voices coming together as one for both full-out terror and some exceptionally vivid stage whispers.”