Dessoff Choirs marks a century with an expressive Brahms Requiem
The performance Saturday afternoon at Town Hall by the Dessoff Choirs and Orchestra was more than just a concert. Certainly, the Dessoff, with soprano Joélle Harvey and baritone Will Liverman delivered Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem with artistry and sympathy, but there was more than that happening on stage.
Start with the conductors, plural. The Dessoff current music director, the excellent Malcolm J. Merriweather, led the musicians for most of the piece. But previous music directors Christopher Shepard and Kent Tritle each took a movement, the first and fourth respectively.
That was because the concert was part of the Dessoff’s centennial celebration. Shepard and Tritle, important parts of the ensemble’s history, were invited to be part of this opening—Merriweather stepped into the choir to sing when the two were conducting—connecting past to present.
The same with the choice of Ein deutsches Requiem . As Merriweather explained during one of the several moments speaking to the crowd between movements there was an historical connection between the choir and Brahms. Founder Margarete Dessoff’s father was Otto Dessoff, a composer and conductor who, as a good friend and colleague to Brahm’s, premiered his Symphony No. 1.
(Dessoff president and choir singer Barbara Scharf Schamest lso read a proclamation from New York City Mayor Eric Adams declaring November 2 Dessoff Choirs day, which provoked some amusement from the audience given the Mayor’s current legal difficulties.)
The breaks to speak with the audience were slightly obtrusive, especially the reading of the proclamation before the fifth movement, a particularly consoling stretch of the music. Each time, though, the performance managed to quickly recover the flow and glow of the experience.
Perhaps that was because beyond the history, the work and ensemble were a fine pairing. The Dessoff is an excellent choir, and the color and timbre of their sound—a gentle surface with body and depth behind it, mellifluous but clear articulation—is a pleasure to hear. They also have an expressive attitude, a kind of social confidence of a skilled musician performing for friends, that is ideal for Ein deutsches Requiem—a unique composition that is as communicative and personable as it is sophisticated.
Harvey and Liverman fit into this perfectly in their short but key solo parts. The former sang with a lark-like shine and vibrato, the latter with his typical handsome, robust sound. Both projected great charisma and the sense of a shared experience between musicians and audience, and that is the essential purpose of the music, a requiem meant to comfort living mourners. Their own articulation was excellent, a near speaking diction that reinforced the experience of direct, no-frills, human communication in the performance. They both seemed eager to connect with the audience.
With a chamber sized orchestra of some two dozen players, the instrumental accompaniment complemented the singing—which filled a massive range of frequencies—with a lean, colorful sound. This was also the source of the only real flaw in the performance: the second movement has most of the darkest intensity and drama of the piece, and in these stretches and up to the choir singing ‘Die Erlöseten des Herrn werden wiederkommen,” the orchestral balances were seriously off, with the timpani playing at a greater volume than the rest of the group combined.
Other than that, the instrumental playing was as polished as the singing. The one substantial difference between Merriweather and the two guest conductors seemed to be the attention each paid to different parts of the combined ensembles. Shepard and Tritle, perhaps enjoying being in front of these singers again, seemed thrilled to attend to the choir, while Merriweather, always precise and smooth, projected a feeling of concentration on all parts with equal care and confidence. As a whole, this was a worthy celebration of a fine and under-appreciated ensemble.
The Dessoff Choirs’ Messiah Sing! takes place 8 p.m., December 6 at Union Theological Seminary. dessoff.org
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