According to the musicologists of the nineteenth and early twentieth century such as Spitta and Albert Schweitzer, Bach's Mass in B Minor is the last holistically Christian Mass, the culmination and end of a tradition begun with Guillaume Machaut. Afterwards came masses of the secular personality – worldly Hadyn, frivolous Mozart, lopsided, half-insane Beethoven, noncommittal Schubert. This is an exaggeration, of course, but faced with music of such magnitude as this one can understand why they felt this to be true.
The Charlotte Symphony and the Oratorio Singers of Charlotte under the direction of Scott Allen Jarrett presented it on Nov. 6th and 7th at Belk Theater at the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center. The Orchestra was in unusually good form. Bach's writing for solo obligatto or continuo parts accompanying the vocal soloists provided the orchestra's principals with an opportunity to shine, and they did, whether in the flute obligatto of the Domine Deus, or in the ritornellos of the Quoniam tu solus sanctus, or the oboe d'amore parts of the Gloria and Credo. Concertmaster Lupanu had raised the bar from the start with some really stylish fiddle-playing, deft and deeply felt, in the Laudamus te. The Charlotte Symphony might turn into a great orchestra if things like this happened more often.
The solo singers were good rather than distinguished, at least until the Benedictus and Agnus Dei. Then Michael Slattery, tenor, and Gigi Velasco-Mitchell, mezzo, touched the stars in Bach's firmament. The Oratorio singers sang their hearts out. Unfortunately, as choirs go, they are four times too big. Bach's choir, according to Christoph Wolff and Leonhardt both, was four choir members to a part. The sheer size of the choir obliterates the part writing. It is powerful, but there is more to the music than this wall of sound. The argument goes that Bach, who never heard this work played in his life, would have jumped at the opportunity to use such vast resources. Maybe so, but he would have written a different work.
As it was, the size began to effect the performance's cohesiveness. The chorus seemed to come from a different sound-world than the chamber-like ensembles clustered around the soloists. And it slowed Bach down, like trying to get a large automobile out of a small driveway or into parking space at an odd angle. This created timing problems in the Credo, and made the Dona nobis Pacem at the end a little too slow and a little too slack.
But how to convey that these demurrals mean little, really, in comparison with the bravery of attempting such a work at all? Or that some of these problems are due to the fact that we don't use the Oratorio singers as a musical resource half enough? In a better world, they would be presenting such great choral works on a regular basis. As it is, we are fortunate once in a while to stand at the juncture between divine truth and human art.