When I was asked to pinch hit for an indisposed critic for the BSO’s performance of Mozart’s Requiem, I was immediately struck by the timing. I had just that morning donated the last of my husband’s BSO formal-wear to charity. His 44-years as a violist in the BSO was fresh in my mind and I could not think of a better way to commemorate this than with this Requiem, a piece he adored,

A few other things struck me, having not attended a BSO on a Saturday evening for many years. First, it was mobbed. With many youngish people. And Friday casual had made it to Saturday. No bling, few ties and jackets, and a largely hypnotized audience with uncommonly good manners. It was an auspicious night for classical music.

Under the inspired conducting of Dima Slobodeniouk, the BSO gave its first performances this week of the very popular Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s hypnotic Tabula Rasa (Blank Slate). The two excellent soloists in this double concerto, plucked from the BSO first violin section, were Lucia Lin and Alexander Velinzon. The fine pianist Vytas Basksis played the haunting keyboard part on a piano “prepared” by inserting screws between some of its strings to have it resemble a gong or bells. A small string orchestra accompanied them. 

Written in 1977 for the violinists Gidon Kremer and Tatiana Grindenko and the conductor Eri Klas, this piece, once recorded in 1984, helped the Estonian composer gain worldwide recognition.

Before one says something, perhaps it is better to say nothing. My music has emerged only after I have been silent for quite some time, literally silent. Ideally, a silent pause is something sacred… If someone approaches silence with love, then this might give birth to music. A composer must often wait a long time for his music. This kind of sublime anticipation is exactly the kind of pause that I value so much. The main focus of the whole piece consists in the need to listen to the silence and find its colors, delve into every single note and approach the music in a completely selfless, humble way.

Bells used in the Catholic liturgy contribute to the music’s mystical experience and provided one of the piece’s joys. Other than in Host’s Planets, I don’t recall another concert experience which made me feel, occasionally, like I was on a spaceship to Neptune.

Tintinnabulation is an area I sometimes wander into when I am searching for answers— in my life, my music, my work. In my dark hours, I have the certain feeling that everything outside this one thing has no meaning. The complex and many-faceted only confuses me, and I must search for unity. What is it, this one thing, and how do I find my way to it? Traces of this perfect thing appear in many guises – and everything that is unimportant falls away. Tintinnabulation is like this. Here I am alone with silence…. I work with very few elements — with one voice, with two voices. I build with the most primitive materials — with the triad, with one specific tonality. The three notes of a triad are like bells. And that is why I called it tintinnabulation. (LA Phil notes)

Sounds simple, yet it clearly resonated with much of the audience who stood and cheered.

The Mozart Requiem, K. 626 (in the Süssmayr completion) was one of the unexpected treats of this (or any) year, partly due to the thrilling conducting of Dima Slobodeniouk, to the massive choruses, and to four very fine soloists: lyric soprano Erin Morley (the best known of the quartet), the powerhouse contralto Avery Amereau, tenor Jack Swanson and the fabulous bass Morris Robinson, who not only distinguished himself in solo after solo (sounding like a trombone when prompted by the Latin) , but who also joined the chorus’s bass section. The Tanglewood Festival Chorus, in fine voice and spirit, was meticulously prepared by James Burton.

We reveled in a most wrathful Dies Irae, a trumpeting Rex tremendae, a consoling Domine Jesu, a Hostias that moved at a perfect pace, and a vocal quartet that made just beautiful sounds each time they got together. 

Shortly after my husband joined the BSO, he participated in the January 1964 Mozart Requiem at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in memory of J.F. Kennedy. The concert stuck with him after he’d forgotten so much else. Many listeners of a certain age will recall the national TV coverage with the singular Cardinal Cushing presiding. Likewise, Saturday’s thrillingly luminous performance will persist in my memory for many, many years.

Susan Miron is a book critic, essayist, and harpist. She writes about classical music and books for The Arts Fuse. Her last two CDs featured her transcriptions of keyboard music of Domenico Scarlatti.