As mentioned, The Bach Collegium's performance of Mozart's Requiem was almost extraordinary.

Two aspects of the concert were consistently annoying.

One was the vocal color of the chorus and the other was the quartet of soloists. These two elements are connected.

The connection is the style of singing in period performances. The style is to remove the natural vibrato of the voice and force it to sing with a straight tone. At times this creates a thin, strained tone that can be unpleasant.

I have to admit I'm not sure why this is considered the appropriate approach to early music.

In "early music" this style is effective and can be stunning in a piece of music by Victoria or Monteverdi. I find no merit in singing Mozart in this style.

Mozart says: "Please don't sing my Requiem in ugly straight-tone voices."

The quartet of soloists were all from out-of-town. The soprano and tenor were from Los Angeles, the mezzo-soprano was from Chicago and the baritone was from The East Coast.

The Bach Collegium is a local ensemble and has no business flying soloists in from across the country. This type of activity drives me nuts.

The biographies of the soloists were impressive but the sounds coming out of their mouths were average to mediocre to terrible.

Mezzo-soprano Angela Young Smucker was average. Baritone Mischa Bouvier was mediocre. He claims to be a baritone but sounds more like a lazy tenor.

Soprano Claire Fedoruk and tenor Pablo Cora were terrible. Neither had any concept of legato singing and both struggled with pitch. Their voices were tiny and boring.

If you're going to bring in out-of-area soloists, they better be fantastic. These soloists were not and it stained an otherwise flawless night of music.