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In His Farewell Westminster Choir College Concert Flummerfelt Conducts Monumental Beethoven Mass

Nancy Plum

Scheduling Ludwig van Beethoven's Missa Solemnis in a concert season elicits very different reactions from performers and audiences. With more than thirty high B flats in the vocal score, sopranos usually run for cover, yet audiences revel in the massive blocks of choral and orchestral sound composed within Beethoven's total deafness. No matter what the reaction, performance of Beethoven's most significant choral work is a major event.

Westminster Choir College of Rider University used this towering work on Saturday night to celebrate Joseph Flummerfelt's 33-year tenure as the College's artistic director and principal conductor and his impending retirement. Dr. Flummerfelt was given the opportunity to program any work of his choosing for his final concert with the Westminster Symphonic Choir, and he selected Missa Solemnis – a dream come true for any conductor.

However, Missa Solemnis is not just for any conductor; this choral/orchestral work is as complex as any 19th-century symphony. However, in this performance at the Trenton War Memorial's Patriots Theater, Dr. Flummerfelt led an interpretation which demonstrated his command over the Symphonic Choir, as well as the orchestra and four soloists which accompanied the concert.

Missa Solemnis is from the last ten years of Beethoven's life, the period that also produced the 9th Symphony and the late string quartets, the sonorities of which drew both amazement and bewilderment from Beethoven's contemporaries. Beethoven considered Missa Solemnis "the greatest work I have composed so far," and approached the mass text as an expression of intensely personal belief. Unlike his immediate predecessors, Beethoven did not separate the text into alternating ensembles and arias, but rather considered each of the five sections as a mini-symphonic work unto itself, weaving and mingling the solo, choral and orchestral lines among themselves. This is the challenge of the Missa Solemnis – to keep all this musical activity on a steady course and emphasize the right voice or instrument at the right time.

Dr. Flummerfelt's tempi for the work were impressively refreshing, and devilish enough at times to show a conductor who has a long and close relationship with his chorus. The opening of the Gloria, as well as its closing fugue, was taken at a break-neck, but fortunately performable, pace. It was clear that Dr. Flummerfelt knew where he was going with this piece and expected everyone else to keep up.

The Westminster Festival Orchestra, comprised of area professional players, adeptly shifted colors for each internal section. The orchestra had its own story to tell, and although the military effects of the brass and timpani were lost at times in the flat lay-out of the stage, this ensemble played as though they had been playing together for years.

The vocal quartet was comprised of three singers with Westminster connections and a fourth who fits well into any vocal ensemble. Soprano Sally Wolf, who with mezzo-soprano Laura Brooks Rice is on the voice faculty of Westminster, had the perfect nuances of a soprano line that floats above the rest of the musical action. Ms. Rice and tenor Patrick Marques (who received his vocal training at Westminster) created an especially clean sound as inner voices. Beethoven intended the vocal soloists to work together as an ensemble, and there are no "stars" among them. These three singers, joined by a very steady David Arnold, were probably hampered most by their positions on the very crowded stage, essentially behind the conductor and so far to the side that Mr. Marques and Mr. Arnold had to turn 90 degrees to get their cues.

Most of all, Missa Solemnis is about the chorus. The full force of the Westminster Symphonic Choir may have been restricted most by the recently renovated stage and acoustics in the Patriots Theater. The first two-thirds of the stage (including the orchestra and soloists) was clear and well blended, but the sound from the back third of the stage was often swallowed up when all forces were playing together. The chorus was most exceptional when singing a cappella, such as the "qui propter nos homines" text of the Credo, when the legendary Westminster Choir was evident. The role of the chorus in this mass is often to echo the text declaimed by the quartet, and with meticulously matched vowels and color, there was never any question that the chorus was fully integrated into, and at times at the forefront, of the performance.

Dr. Flummerfelt is retiring from Westminster Choir College, yet like many conductors leaving an ensemble after an extended tenure, his influence will be felt for years to come.