Falletta Puts Stress on Romantic Drama

Tchaikovsky venerated Mozart and paid homage to him in works such as the Serenade for Strings. But the Serenade still makes an odd match for Mozart’s Requiem, and JoAnn Falletta produced little resonance between the two with her Long Beach Symphony and the Pacific Chorale on Saturday at the Terrace Theater.

Falletta’s big-orchestra, big-chorus approach to the Requiem suggested scant reverence for the verities of the period practice movement. Instead, she concentrated on passion, turbulent and sweet, reinforcing the dramatic potential of text and music through sharp contrasts of tempos and dynamics and Romantically engorged sound.

Her performance certainly had the courage of its old-fashioned convictions. The chorus provided explosive power, a firm sense of line and Latin diction that was almost equal to the pace of Falletta’s blazing “Dies irae.” There were patches of frayed ensemble in more exposed moments, but the orchestra generally backed the singers with complementary strength and a surprising degree of clarity.

The soloists were most challenged by the scale of things, but Falletta had strong voices on hand: soprano Erie Mills, mezzo Malin Fritz, tenor Jonathan Mack and baritone Jeff Morrissey. They coped gracefully in the main, and where the “Recordare” and “Benedictus” blurred a bit, Fritz’s wide vibrato was as much a problem as the disheveled accompaniment.

Falletta came closest to connecting her expansive Tchaikovsky to her urgent Mozart with a caressive ebb and flow of pastel poignancy in the Serenade’s Elegy. Otherwise, this was an accomplished but restrained performance, in need of considerably more sensuous swagger and dash.