It is fascinating how some musical works seem to exert a magnetic pull on performers and listeners all at once. How else to explain the three different productions of the Brahms Requiem that have been scheduled this season?
The third of these, a collaboration of The Spectrum Singers and the Indian Hill Symphony Orchestra, took place Friday night at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul. To judge by the sold-out crowd that lined up outside the church on Tremont Street, audiences have been thirsting to hear this work.
Given the world situation, a Requiem that focuses on the suffering and solace of those who mourn, rather than on the redemption of the departed souls, is probably exactly what is needed. Brahms, with his telling selection of biblical texts about the vanity and the transience of life, seems to have much to teach contemporary listeners.
The performing forces assembled by conductor John Ehrlich had serious acoustical and logistical obstacles to confront in the Cathedral Church. A relatively intimate space, the hall has a very bright, reverberant ambiance. This makes it flattering for small ensembles and early music groups.
But there isn't enough room in the chancel to hold a big chorus, an orchestra, and two soloists, so some instrumentalists spilled out in front of the first row of pews.
That made for some difficulty in keeping all the musicians together. And the sound, especially at high volume, tended to be super-saturated and murky, with the orchestra often overwhelming the chorus and the soloists.
That said, Ehrlich and company offered a deeply felt performance whose rough edges did not prevent the musical message from getting through to its listeners.
The chorus, which has made a specialty of singing without accompaniment, knows how to blend individual voices into a harmonious entity. The sweetness of tone was particularly evident in some of the quiet passages. When called upon, too, Ehrlich and his ensemble could produce a hair-raising tumult as in the climactic chorus, ''O Death, Where is Thy Sting?''
Both soloists seemed to have been born to sing their parts. Janet Brown, with her heaven-struck soprano, offered infinite comfort in the fifth movement, the one segment of the Requiem that Brahms probably wrote in memory of his mother, who died after he began the work. Brown's voice soared effortlessly into the ether. And Robert Honeysucker poured forth noble tone and an evangelist's fervor in his verses about man's ''vain shew'' and the mystery of redemption.
