THE great dory of this performance last Thursday of Verdi's Requiem was the quartet of solo singers - Cara O'Sullivan, Bridget Knowles, Alan Oke and Andrew Murphy. Their voices matched each other in the most satisfying way and there was never a hint of merely individual virtuosity, whether in quartet, trio, duo or solo.
The O'Reilly Hall in UCD is not resonant enough for Verdi's shock tactics in the Dies Irae section, even with the support of two choirs the Fleischmann Choir from Cork and the Cologne Philharmonic Choir - about 200 voices; what was intended to be overwhelming sounded tawdry.
Cike, the tenor, had the most Italianate voice of the soloists, and this served him well in Ingemisco, blending the operatic and the devotional in a natural way.
The two choirs produced a fierce volume of sound at the climaxes, but sounded most rich and full in quieter sections, such as the Agnus Dei. I wonder if a slightly less emphatic approach might not have been more effective in those passages where Verdi thought he was letting all hell loose; we are not his contemporaries and loudness seems too obvious. here was more fear of death in the quiet accompaniment of Lux aeterna luceat eis, that moving trio for alto, tenor and bass, than in the explosions of drums and trumpets in the Dies Irae.
