Puccini mass builds up to Easter in Randers
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Rachel Einarsson3 min read|20. March 2023
Randers Kammerorkester is not afraid to put a large but less exposed work on the bill. It happens on 1 April, when the orchestra opens up to the notes of Puccini’s ”Messa di Gloria” as a prelude to Easter.
”We are not here to generate a large audience, but to challenge the listeners and make them aware of new and exciting works”.
David Riddell, chief conductor and artistic director of Randers Kammerorkester, sounds confident as he explains why the orchestra from central Jutland dares to put Puccini’s ”Messa di Gloria” on the programme for a concert that serves as a prelude to Easter on the Saturday before Palm Sunday. For Randers Kammerorkester has a rule of thumb.
”At Christmas we try to alternate between different works: when we have played Handel’s ”Messiah” one year, we take a completely different work the year after, before we then play the ”Christmas Oratorio”. The year after that it becomes a completely different work again, before we start the cycle over with ”Messiah”,” says David Riddell. At Easter, however, the orchestra’s programme is always unpredictable. ”At Easter it varies a great deal, and this time it is Puccini. Our audience is used to us experimenting,” Riddell continues.
Strictly speaking, ”Messa di Gloria” is not an Easter work, but its religious content, which follows the template of the classical Catholic mass, suits the occasion, Riddell judges. Stylistically, you should expect the sound and intensity of an opera. ”The work contains a Puccini voice, so something is demanded of the singer. The work is perhaps too corny for some listeners. But there are strong emotions in it,” says David Riddell, who also finds the work not particularly sorrowful, which is otherwise often characteristic of the genre.
Puccini wrote the mass at the age of 22, and if you listen with a sharp ear you can discover that he reused passages from the mass in, for example, ”Tosca” and ”La Boheme”. At the concert the audience will experience the mass in an arrangement for chamber orchestra, for the work was originally written for a large choir and a full symphony orchestra. However, Randers Kammerorkester is joined by the tenor Anders Kampmann and Jens Søndergaard, baritone, which accords with the original line-up of soloists. And Anders Kampmann looks forward to the concert. ”The work is simply adorned with good melodies of the kind you catch yourself humming on the way home from the concert,” is his assessment. He also emphasises that the mass offers something for all listeners. ”It is both an interesting work for connoisseurs of Puccini’s music and for those who do not yet know it so well. Connoisseurs will be able to relate it to Puccini’s other musical catalogue, and the less seasoned can enjoy a work of great beauty and variety,” he says.
That it is a youthful work by Puccini is, however, audible, he also stresses. ”The music sounds youthful and virile and with a tone that shows a younger and more spontaneous Puccini than the one we know from operas such as ”Tosca”, ”Madame Butterfly” and ”La Bohéme”,” is his placement of the work. And he also looks forward to performing together with his colleague Jens Søndergaard, with whom he has sung, among other places, in Herning Kirkes Drengekor.
Randers Kammerorkester plays Puccini’s ”Messa di Gloria” together with Sct. Pauls Kantori.
The soloists are Jens Søndergaard and Anders Kampmann.
The concert takes place on 1 April at 15.00 in Sct. Mortens Kirke, Randers.