Antonín DVOŘÁK (1841-1904)
Stabat Mater, Op.58 [58:53]
Julia Kleiter (soprano), Gerhild Romberger (alto), Dmitry Korchak (tenor), Tareq Nazmi (bass)
Julius Drake (piano)
Bavarian Radio Choir/Howard Arman
rec. 2019, Prinzregententheater, Munich
BR KLASSIK 900526 [58:53]
With most recorded performances of Dvořák’s Stabat Mater running anywhere between 75 and 90 minutes, to find one which does the whole thing in under an hour poses questions which cannot all be put down to Howard Arman’s interpretation of the music. Indeed, this reading of Dvořák’s most intimate and personal work wants for nothing in the intensity of its emotion or the meditative contemplation of this most sorrowful of ancient sacred texts.
The real reason for the apparent brevity is the edition performed here (the recording was made at a live concert performance). While most of us know Dvořák’s Stabat Mater as the large-scale choral piece with large orchestral accompaniment published by Simrock in 1881 and which became, despite Simrock’s strong reservations about the choice of text (he suggested that for the non-Catholic markets of Germany, the UK and the USA, it was a “dead loss”), a huge and instant success, this new recording presents the work in Dvořák’s original guise, for choir, four soloists and piano. It comprises three less movements (the three central movements of the 1881 version, “Tui, nati vulnerati”, “Fac me vere tecum flere”, and “Virgo virginum praeclava” were all added in 1876) and the orchestral writing of the later version is far more than merely a filling out of the original piano part.
As Wolfgang Stähr observes in his often excessively emotive booklet notes, Dvořák’s original 1876 Stabat Mater seems more like “a series of songs lamenting the deaths of children”, and points out that it was written in the aftermath of the death of his own daughter in September 1875. It remains a subject of some dispute between musicologists whether this seven-movement version with piano accompaniment, dated 7 May 1876, was ever really intended for performance or was really just the preliminary sketches for a work which, after something of a hiatus, was finally completed in November 1877 and published in 1881. This performance from the Bavarian Radio Choir under Howard Arman does not provide conclusive proof either way, although it does offer a compelling insight into Dvořák’s thought processes as he set to work on what was to become one of his most popular choral works.
While Stähr also writes that “the beginning sounds like a catastrophe”, he most certainly is not passing any kind of judgement on this performance, which is impeccably correct as well as emotionally poised, leaving it open for the listener to interpret the music according to individual emotional, spiritual or aesthetic bias. There is a feeling of the inner power of the text being held at arm’s length, engendered as much by the piano accompaniment, which has none of the blatant word-painting or dynamic expressiveness of the orchestra. I particularly admire the way in which Julius Drake handles this, playing with great poise and delicacy, but never intruding into the emotional core of the music. His handling of that strange, tentative, almost experimental opening, is quite inspired; not least his highly effective use of the pedal to create an aura of mystery. The chorus is equally light in touch and subtle, never grabbing attention or imposing any kind of dramatic presence.
That leaves the soloists to deliver the emotional interpretation of the text. Bass Tareq Nazmi seems to be the most highly-charged, delivering his solo number, “Fac, ut ardeat cor meum” with an almost operatic authority (against which the female voices of the chorus take on a divinely angelic quality). His is certainly the most assertive voice of the four; something immediately apparent from his strong presence in the quartet of the first movement. In their duet “Fac, ut portem Christi mortem”, soprano Julia Kleiter and tenor Dmitry Korchak, seem somewhat distant and muffled, which may be down to the recording, but certainly their voices, despite a shimmering purity in Kleiter’s top range and a nimble delicacy in Korchak’s, generally lack real presence or personality. Both are far more impressive in the quartet sections. Gerhild Romberger reveals a somewhat uneven quality in her alto solo, “Inflammatus et accensus”, never quite conveying the passion behind a text that talks of a burning heart but neither evoking the idea of a supplicant seeking protection on Judgement Day. This, too, is a voice that works better in ensemble than in solo numbers.
Whether or not Dvořák intended his seven-movement 1876 setting of the Stabat Mater with piano accompanied as a complete, finished work, is open to question, but the Bavarian Radio choir under Howard Arman make a very convincing argument for its legitimacy as more than a sketch for the better-known 10-movement version with orchestra.
Marc Rochester
