Guest conductor John Nelson once again lived up to his reputation as one of the leading interpreters of large-scale choral-orchestral works of our time as he guided the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Chorus through the labyrinthine grandeur of Berlioz’s Te Deum Thursday night at Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center.
The work, an opulently romantic nineteenth-century setting of a fourth-century Latin hymn, is anything but churchly in mood or outlook; Berlioz took every hint contained in the almost austere text to create an hour-long exploration of the sonic possibilities of large orchestra and chorus—with organ and children’s choir thrown in for good measure. The instrumental introduction in itself is a hair-raising dialogue between the full orchestra and organ, rendered all the more fascinating for the bold simplicity of the material. After this almost outlandish opening display of pure power, Berlioz proceeds to alternate moments of mystical serenity with tidal waves of sound. Whether he was sincere, from a religious viewpoint, in his approach to this text, is beside the point. He was absolutely sincere—and totally successful—in his attempt to create an effect.
Berlioz’s command of musical architecture is nearly perfect, here. The material, ranging from gargantuan to strikingly subtle, is constantly engaging, and nothing seems out of place or miscalculated, right down to the final crash of cymbals and blast of trumpets. The result is thrilling rather than uplifting, and that’s what the composer had in mind.
The performers (enough instrumentalists and singers to populate a small town) and the room itself (a magnificent space for works of this sort) came together beautifully, with conductor Nelson marshalling the forces and pacing the hefty material convincingly. Tenor Richard Croft, a member of the faculty at the University of North Texas, presented the wonderful brief tenor solo with just the right mid-nineteenth-century sense of drama. The Dallas Symphony Chorus, trained by Joshua Habermann, ranged from oceanic power to striking delicacy. Cynthia Nott’s Children’s Chorus of Greater Dallas was appropriately celestial.
Nelson (who, incidentally, conducts without baton) and the orchestra had opened the concert at the opposite end of the musical spectrum, with Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 in E-flat. Nelson brought out the high spirits of this work with brisk clarity.
