Schubert wrote music suited to the practical needs of his own times that public concert formats now have trouble putting to use.
Fraternal organizations, for example, were popular in his Vienna, and he composed about 50 horuses for them. The two items heard on Saturday night at the Temple of Dendur in the Metropolitan Museum of Art — sung by the men of the RIAS Kammerchor Berlin — made up only a fraction of a Romantic-leaning program for both segregated and mixed voices, but “Die Nacht” and “Lied im Freien” are strong enough repertory to make one regret that few if any gay men’s choruses have taken them up. A natural habitat goes unused.
The acronym of the ensemble’s title refers to the radio station that broadcast from the American sector of Berlin during postwar occupation. Politics has changed in 60 years, but this excellent group, conducted here by James Wood, survives. The voices were well tuned, even in the slippery modulations of the evening’s eight Brahms songs.
The singers also had the steady nerves and musicianship for Ligeti’s “Night” and “Morning,” with their barnyard sound effects and imitation church bells, and for his “Three Fantasies After Friedrich Hölderlin,” a singer’s nightmare of fractured time schemes and swimming yet calculated textures. This is very difficult music.
Mr. Wood and his RIAS singers do not seem too interested in glossy uniformity and instead produce an inviting roughness of texture from which individual voices sometimes protrude. The Temple of Dendur’s mammoth echo was used to their advantage, adding resonance and color with minimal distortion. Mr. Wood knew how to wait at the end of phrases and let the space have its full say.
The tough-sounding female voices sang two Schumann pieces and the full choir two Mahler arrangements by Clytus Gottwald. “Die zwei blauen Augen” was the more adaptable of the two. “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” seemed a little limp and vague in its changed surroundings.
RIAS Kammerchor, Charlottenstraße 56, 10117 Berlin, Germany
Tickets Telefon: +49.30.20298725 - Mo-Fr 9-18 Uhr, E-Mail: tickets@rias-kammerchor.de, www.rias-kammerchor.de
