PBO: Disruption or Train Wreck?

In writing my preview article for the final concert of the season to be presented by Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale, I suggested that at least two of the selections on the program would be “disruptive.” This applied to the entire second half of the program, which consisted only of the “Missa in labore requies” (a Mass for rest from labor), composed by Georg Muffat. One might think that a Mass setting would not be disruptive; but this one was scored for 24 separate parts, including eight vocal soloists, five trumpets, three trombones, and two cornetts.

I do not think I have previously seen the stage of Herbst Theatre as crowded as it was last night. This may have made for good spectacle, but it definitely did not do the music any favors. Ultimately, what emerged was a muddle of sonorities and an account of the Mass text that would not have been recognizable, even to those that already knew the text by heart. Conceivably, Music Director Richard Egarr wanted the season to go out with a bang; but, ultimately, all he got was a train wreck of poorly blended sonorities.

The other disruption did not fare much better. This was the world premiere of Mason Bates’ “Appalachian Ayre,” given the disruptive subtitle “baroque meets bluegrass” on the poster design. However, while the music could have been disruptive enough to jar the attentive listener, the performance itself turned disruption into dreariness. I would like to believe that there was a bit of Justified lurking in Bates’ bluegrass rhetoric; but, if it was there, Egarr’s conducting disclosed no sign of it.

The two works that separated Bates from Muffat were not as disruptive. They consisted of a lament to mark the death of Ferdinand III by the Austrian composer Johann Heinrich Schmelzer and an instrumental partita by the Bohemian composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber. Sadly, even in these pieces, there was very little in Egarr’s leadership to encourage audience attention. Since the Biber selection was in A minor, one might have expected a dark rhetoric to embrace both compositions; but all that emerged was a bevy of notes from a string ensemble with no sense of any rhetoric at all.