Carriers Movie Reviews

Berlioz's Te Deum remains one of the great, underplayed masterpieces of the romantic era. A majestic, outsized juxtaposition of human and divine, this mammoth piece for orchestra, organ, solo tenor, and three choruses has defeated many of the forces that have essayed it. But Claudio Abbado has always been one to rise to a challenge, and here he leads the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra through a marvelous reading of the score. From the opening call-and-response of organ and orchestra tossing chords at one another to the thrilling massed conclusion, Abbado and his superb singers and musicians expertly capture Berlioz's every nuance. The stunning fortes are never allowed to overwhelm the quieter moments, so the piece becomes less a disjointed series of climaxes than an integrated whole. Just listen to the hair-raising crescendos of Tibi Omnes, or the white-hot excitement of the martial Judex Crederis, for a lesson in how a profound understanding of the music's quiet moments makes the eventual release all the more powerful. Only soloist José Carreras disappoints, though even his weak vocalizing is powerfully emotive. Rodney Greenberg's direction of this concert film is as lucid and unobtrusively varied as Abbado's conducting, judiciously picking out the different forces without dwelling anywhere so long so as to lose the bigger picture. The disc is filled out with an appropriately lyrical reading of Wagner's Die Meistersinger overture. The two pieces are separately indexed, which proves somewhat frustrating. To go from one to the other requires a return to the DVD's main menu. A small hassle, though, for such fine music making. --Bruce Reid