The renaissance composer Gesualdo is best known for hiring an assassin to dispose of his unfaithful wife and her lover. This bizarre personality is reflected in his astonishing madrigals.
At Bridgewater Hall, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Gianandrea Noseda performed arrangements of three such pieces made by Stravinsky, but it was a pity that the programme book did not include the original texts.
It was impossible to know whether the performance reflected Gesualdo's extrovert and eccentric illustration of literary content. Yet the experience was merely a brief, superfluous prelude to Verdi's Requiem, of which Noseda gave a bold and firmly theatrical interpretation.
The subdued beginning, Requiem Aeternam, was penitent, with the BBCPO's muted strings gentle and tender. The Leeds Philharmonic Chorus and Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus combined to produce a refined texture. The Dies Irae, by contrast, was a terrifying blaze. Noseda took it very fast - but while this would have obscured the detail in a cathedral acoustic, it seemed ideal for the concert hall.
The on-stage and off-stage trumpet fanfares heralding the Tuba Mirum brilliantly phased into unison before Noseda shook the hall again with another chorus of hellfire. In many of the solo movements and ensembles, the singers demonstrated feverish delivery. However, they were frequently obscured by Noseda's insistently loud direction of the orchestra.
In Recordare, the serene duet between soprano Barbara Frittoli and the mezzo-soprano Luciana D'Intino was beguiling, yet its impact was undermined by an explosive climax.
The same problem marred tenor Hugh Smith's vivid Ingemisco: he was done few favours by Noseda's overegged orchestral accompaniment.
Bass Sergei Alexashkin fared better, growling his Confutatis solo with more melodrama than reverence. Yet there were also moments of softer beauty, such as the closing coda of the Offertorio.
Noseda's Verdi Requiem never had a dull moment, although it seemed sonically supercharged at the expense of eloquence and understatement. It was a pity that the only universal truth it communicated was volume.
