Brick Presbyterian Church wraps an expressive Mozart “Requiem” around service
The Brick Presbyterian Church’s Chancel Choir and Orchestra performed Mozart’s Requiem as part of the regular church service in their Park Avenue parish on a rainy Sunday evening.
Before the Requiem, Dr. Raymond Nagem, minister of music at Brick Presbyterian and a member of the organ faculty at Manhattan School of Music, brought the room to silence with a dazzling but controlled interpretation of Mozart’s Fantasia in F minor, which was followed by the hymn “Abide with Me.”
An opening prayer by the Reverend Dr. Thomas Evans preceded the Mozart performance, setting a proper tone of mourning and melancholy—praying for those who, among other things, have lost their sense of self and their sense of hope.
Nagem led his instrumentalists and singers with seriousness and majesty, eliciting a performance of Mozart’s Requiem that exceeded that of a pick-up ensemble, with attentive, devoted, and expressive playing.
The twenty-piece orchestra glided through the opening “Introit” with confidence. The woodwind section blended wonderfully, with clarinetist Jo-Ann Sternberg’s varied dynamics notable in her weaving of melody. Soprano Suzanne Karpov’s solo, set the bar high for the soloists who would follow.
That pulse was impressively constant in most movements, even if the orchestra lost some steam in the “Dies Irae” and “Lacrimosa,” and the singers got fitfully muddled in some contrapuntal sections of the “Sanctus” and “Benedictus.”
Perhaps most poignant of all was the “Recordare,” in which all soloists—soprano Tonna Miller-Vallés, alto Erica Koehring, tenor Sean Fallen, and bass Vincent Graña—sang in conversation with each other, no one taking up the spotlight, everyone in time with the orchestra, their lines converging like reciprocal sighs. Bass Ned Hanlon intoned the “Tuba mirum” solo with manly deliberation, minus the usual pacing liberties.
The horn section deserves as much praise as the woodwinds. Even in Süssmayr’s “Benedictus,” their declamations were warm and round, trumpeters Alejandro Lopez-Samame and Thomas Verchot punctuating the singers’ phrases with pearls instead of periods.
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