In a Requiem Played Like This, the Dead Have It Easy

Brahms was German, and when he wrote a grand Requiem for the dead, he translated the biblical texts into German. The result? A German Requiem, which wasn't meant as an exercise in tub-thumping nationalism but is very German nonetheless.

Kurt Masur, who conducted the National Symphony Orchestra in the German Requiem at the Kennedy Center last night, is also German. And he has always had a reputation as the most German of conductors, a stolid, solid, even dour interpreter firmly in the tradition of the old kapellmeisters.

We're also at the emotional low point of Lent, a season that has inspired German composers to the most wonderful excesses of dark, brooding, anguished music. And so you had a perfect storm of gloominess brewing over the Concert Hall as the NSO prepared not just the Requiem, but an all-Brahms program. How would it all play out? A deeply satisfying wallow? Or a festival of lugubriousness?

The latter. It's unfortunate to hear the National Symphony playing so listlessly, with so little precision, energy and enthusiasm. Brahms done without absolute conviction is deadlier than most composers, and last night one was reminded of the tired old joke by George Bernard Shaw -- that Brahms's Requiem can be borne patiently only by the corpse. One hates to repeat it. One can't help it.

Things didn't start out well. It was inspired to pair the Requiem, which lasts more than an hour but less than an evening, with Brahms's Variations on a Theme by Haydn. An all-Brahms program is box-office gold, if not terribly imaginative programming. But these two pieces are very compatible, the Requiem giving you the essence of Brahms, and the variations the whole of him.

Well played, inspirited with bumptious joy, rustic sweetness and occasional notes of sentimentality and nostalgia, these variations on a simple-minded tune are a catalogue of everything Brahms could do with the orchestra. But it was a different sort of catalogue in Masur's hands. The winds were dry in the theme, the strings heavy and a bit sour in the first variation, the phrases long but unshaped in the third, the horns problematic in the sixth, the pulse and mood narcoleptic in the seventh, and the eighth was purely formless.

The blame seems to lie with Masur, who looks tired and conducts with wagging hands and uncertain gestures. Masur is 81, and he has a right to be tired. Some conductors make magnificent music through the most excruciating physical declines. But Masur was not making magnificent music last night. That's sad, but it's a fact.

Brahms's Requiem can provide consolation about such facts but only if it's played from the very first notes with an exalted philosophical hush. It's a rare spell when it works, and anyone who has fallen under its influence will defend the piece against all detractors, Shaw included. But if the listener isn't forcibly transported to Brahms's uncertain, agonizing, agnostic world of doubt and hope, the piece simply lumbers along.

The best of the performance belonged to the vocalists, especially the Master Chorale of Washington. They hid much of the lackluster playing of the orchestra and produced a pure, balanced, clear sound, especially lovely in quiet passages. But throughout the performance, one wished someone was challenging them to produce greater contrasts, sharper delineations of the musical mood.

The second movement, a kind of death march cobbled together with a reflective idyll, needed a more menacing tone in its opening lines, but alas, Masur allowed the dotted rhythms to be played flaccidly, blunting the darker edge of the music. The grand choral conclusion to the sixth movement was well done as a musical exercise. But again, how much better it sounds when it is set up, dramatically, from the beginning of the Requiem, when it contrasts more strongly with everything that has come before, so that the cries about death and death's sting are horrifying, not merely loud.

John Relyea, a bass-baritone, was value added. His voice has not only depth and gravity, but also flexibility and pliancy, and he was able to produce both a stentorian Old Testament sound and a long, shapely line. In the fifth movement, soprano Heidi Grant Murphy was covered, much of the time, by the orchestra and chorus. When clearly audible, she sang sweetly, but she didn't lead one through this difficult, even opaque music, with much intellectual confidence.

It was a frustrating night. Anyone who loves the Requiem has a list of favorite phrases that call out to be squeezed hard, loved brutally, wrung until they give a little blood. But there was little musical tough love last night, just a desultory tour through a familiar piece of music.

The performance repeats tonight and tomorrow at 8 p.m.