YOUTH SYMPHONY, CHORAL GROUPS : BRAHMS’ ‘GERMAN REQUIEM’ AT UCLA

The American Youth Symphony and six UCLA choral groups teamed up for a nice, fresh-faced, clean-cut performance of Brahms’ “A German Requiem” on Sunday at Royce Hall, UCLA.

Too bad that Brahms’ Requiem, one of the sublime works of the human spirit, requires so much more than that.

Conductor Donn Weiss favored fast tempos and generally exhibited a pedestrian, unimaginative approach--until his breakneck pacing of the final movement (marked Feierlich , or solemn) showed a remarkable insensitivity to the text and the sense of the music.

The 230-plus singers sang with youthful brightness, but lacked a feel for the meaning of the words. They expressed little triumph or terror or consolation or any of the passionate emotions in the text.

Would that the singers could have picked up more of the instrumentalists’ admirable sense of phrasing, accent, sweep and precision.

Of the soloists, soprano Kari Windingstad sang with warmth and expressivity. But baritone Timothy Mussard proved a bit histrionic and lacking in the requisite vocal weight for his call of the Last Trumpet duties.

Incidentally, Brahms, in a nonsectarian spirit, chose scriptural passages that made no direct mention of Christ. What translator, then, was responsible for the line “We shall not all sleep when He cometh”? No name was given in the program.