A tour of Boston's vocal riches with Boston Baroque

Jeptha's Daughter, by Chauncey Bradley Ives

Boston Baroque's intriguing program last weekend, "De Profundis," marked for this venerable organization a renewed focus on the chorus - and as is often the case for conductor Martin Pearlman, it was also built around a musical argument, a "case," if you will.  To be frank, I found that case not entirely convincing, but it was certainly worth a listen (if only more classical programming could boast Pearlman's intellectual rigor) and what's more, the concert not only resurrected a musical figure who has long been neglected in local performance, but offered a kind of survey of local singers as well.

That neglected musical figure is Giacomo Carissimi - a name well-known to choral enthusiasts, as he taught Charpentier and influenced Handel - but not to the general public (perhaps not even the classical public).  I myself had never experienced Carissimi in performance, so I was grateful to hear Jephte, a masterpiece whose impact is hard to over-estimate (it was held up as a model of the nascent oratorio form, and Handel even quoted it in Samson).

Jephte is most famous for its concluding lamentation, which is riven by daringly plaintive dissonances; but the oratorio proved quite effective - and affecting - throughout its length (I'm often struck by just how quickly a new musical form reaches an artistic peak).  The tale is the Biblical version of a myth that has long served composers well (a Cretan variant provides the core of Idomeneo); Jephtha (one of the judges from Judges) promises in prayer that if he is granted victory in battle, he will sacrifice the first thing he sees upon his return home.  Fans of tragic irony will be unsurprised to learn that his beloved daughter greets him before anyone else at his homecoming (that Yahweh - such a joker!).

Pearlman didn't quite conjure the plunging emotional arc that Carissimi has constructed (Jephte is a roller coaster ride from victorious joy to catastrophic grief), but his work with the chorus, which seemed beefed up for the occasion with many of Boston's best singers, was exemplary, and he drew remarkable solos from Owen McIntosh (who's a bit young for Jephte, but made you forget that), as well as Kamala Soparkar, Brenna Wells, Ulysses Thomas, and particularly the reliable Teresa Wakim, whose pure soprano imbued the doomed daughter's lament with a devastating ache.

The concluding chorus, Plorate, filii Israel, was likewise poignantly intense, and did seem to lead seamlessly into the melancholy dissonances of Charpentier's late mass, Missa, Assumpta est Maria. But to these ears as the Charpentier progressed, Pearlman's argument, thoughtful as it was, slowly fell apart; this composer is simply sui generis, and the ingrown complexity of his structures seemed to quickly leave Carissimi far behind.

Don't get me wrong; Missa, Assumpta est Maria has many fascinations - Charpentier always does - but here, as the mass slowly fractured into a mosaic of interlocking solos, it began to lose momentum (which is unusual for a Pearlman performance).  Luckily most of those solos were nevertheless exquisitely performed, again by Wells, McIntosh, and Thomas, who were joined by Bradford Gleim and Jonas Budris, among others.  The full chorus (along with the orchestra) got to strut its stuff in the gorgeous concluding Agnus Dei and Domine Salvum.

Pearlman then took a brief detour into Bach with the oddly lively Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit, an early cantata which is supposed to be a kind of comforting elegy (it was written for a funeral).  It's best known for its spare, transparent accompaniment, but for once the Boston Baroque instrumentalists didn't quite sparkle enough; instead the big news was mezzo Katherine Growdon, who looked terrified to be center stage but sang beautifully nonetheless.

At its close the concert returned to its loose thesis, with one of Handel's well-known Chandos Anthems (No. 8).  After the impacted complexity of the Charpentier, I admit Handel felt like a warm, happy bath (even if these anthems aren't in the top drawer of his achievement, and even if their debt to Carissimi is a vague one). We heard once more from Teresa Wakim and Owen McIntosh, who both again did well, while tenor Mark Sprinkle, who had struggled a bit in the Bach, came more into his own.  But the spotlight was stolen by tenor Jonas Budris, whose confident flights into the vocal stratosphere drew startled applause from the house (Budris pulled the same trick with Handel and Haydn last Christmas).  It was a sweet capstone to an evening that above all else demonstrated how high the local vocal talent can fly.

To Bach and back with Hilary Hahn

The performer in repose.

Artistic affinity is both a fact of life and an utter mystery - and much on my mind of late, as last weekend's Celebrity Series performances by violinist Hilary Hahn (above) and pianist Jeremy Denk were almost case studies in this curious phenomenon.

You all know what I'm talking about - indeed, the concert-hall crowd senses this kind of thing immediately; suddenly, after respectful applause throughout a program, the house goes wild for a piece, in the kind of instinctive response that performers live for.  A critical answer to the question of what, precisely, the audience is sensing remains elusive, however.  What secret link sparks the exciting synergy between a musician and a composer that yields that ineffable thrill?  Sometimes a critic can point to this or that technical skill which gives a performer the edge with certain material - that was definitely the case with Denk, whose touch and demeanor mapped to some composers, but not to others - but far less so with Hahn, whose command was impeccable, and indeed seemed adjustable to the technical demands of everything she played.

No, with Hahn the crux of the issue came down to - well, soul, for lack of a matter word.  For she performed everything in her program expertly (almost beyond expertly).  It would have been hard to argue with a single phrase. Yet strangely enough, of the composers on offer, only one - Johann Sebastian Bach - sounded anything like a soulmate.

But Bach came late in the program.  First came a suite of short commissions (one of three such sets) all intended, Hahn has said, as "encores." Now a great encore is like a little black cocktail dress: it's short and makes a statement.  A memorable mood, a striking phrase - a musical haiku is just the thing.  And to be honest, Ms. Hahn has been lucky in her commissions - almost all were appealing and highly crafted; but all were slightly over-embroidered. Indeed, you could feel their composers almost obsessively stitching in one too many ideas - it seemed as if each saw this (a solo by Hilary Hahn!) as their one shot at showing a large audience everything they could do.

Still, a handful made an impact.  Du Yun's "When a Tiger Meets a Rosa Rugosa," for instance, had a  memorably melancholic Chinese cadence (this piece proved only one stop in a kind of musical world tour, btw - other pieces hinted at Spanish, Middle Eastern or even Indian accents, as in Kala Ramnath's hypnotic "Aalap and Tarana").  Even more striking, however, were David Lang's lyrically circling "Light Moving" and particularly the shivering cries of Jeff Myers' "The Angry Brids of Kauai."

Not quite as successful was Hahn's first shot at a major composer - Corelli, whose Sonata No. 4 in F Major she essayed in a curiously diffident manner, against a still-more-curious accompaniment by pianist Cory Smythe, who didn't seem to know what to do with the Steinway he was playing (the piece was meant for harpsichord).  Things did finally warm up in a final, sweet Allegro, but the choice of the work itself left one puzzled.

Stranger still was the Fauré sonata (No. 1 in A Major) that followed - largely because Smythe was suddenly in his element, while Hahn was still wandering in the wilderness.  If you'd heard half this performance, though, you would have been wowed - Smythe's plush touch, so wrong for Corelli, proved nearly perfect for Fauré, and he handled the work's complicated counterpoints and swooping filigree with dazzling skill.  Meanwhile Hahn was just as skillful - but, as my partner pointed out, she seemed to be playing "like a competition winner" rather than an interpreter.  Perhaps Fauré's almost impacted sense of the romantic is hard for a young performer to parse; but I was reminded of Karajan's famous advice to another violinist trying out a punctilious rendition of a complex piece:  "You played it perfectly.  Now live with it for a year."

But then came the Bach - the great Ciaconna from Partita No. 2.  The "Chaconne" (as it's usually called) remains a landmark in the repertoire, one of those works by whose demands (it's thick with double, triple, and even the occasional quadruple stop) great violinists are tested.  And Hahn didn't just play it, she seemed to burn through it.  I wouldn't call hers a highly original rendering - but what an attack; Hahn had a kind of authority that comes from utter familiarity with, and comprehension of, the depths of a piece (she has clearly been living with this one for more than a year; indeed, Hahn has said that she has played Bach every single day of her life since childhood).  The variations seemed to only build in intensity as she progressed, and almost before she had hit the final, resolving note the audience was on its feet with something close to a shout.

There was more on the program - three more "encores," but nothing came close to this level of excitement.  But then how could it?  Hearty applause brought Hahn back for one more actual encore - Richard Barrett's "Shade," a skittering little number that hinted and haunted, and then was done.  Which left me haunted by the question raised by the whole performance: when will Hilary Hahn sense the depths in other composers that she now feels in Bach?  All I can say is that, when and if she does, she'll deliver a concert that will raise the roof - or burn the house down.

A mostly magnificent Magnificat from Handel & Haydn

Detail from Botticelli's Madonna of the Magnificat

I'd been looking forward to the Handel and Haydn season opener - a Bach orgy focused on the Magnificat - because artistic director Harry Christophers is a Bach fanatic, and the program had been cannily designed to draw in the crowds (with "Air on a G String," and "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring"), while showcasing some worthy rareties (particularly Cantata 71, Gott ist mein König).

So last Friday Symphony Hall was packed - with an audience, as a few other critics have begun to note, younger and more diverse than most.  And thank Gott, the performance did not disappoint.

But it didn't quite astound me, either.  Indeed, to be honest, it seemed to me that Christophers' vision of "the greatest composer who ever lived" (his own words) never quite came into focus - or rather it moved in and out of focus over the course of the evening.

Which puts me in that tricky position I'm famous for: I'm that critic who first makes a fuss over artistic greatness, and then later, when everybody else shows up to applaud, begins finding fault.  So let me say I'm thrilled that Handel and Haydn is finally getting the credit it has long deserved - even, at last, positive reviews in the Globe!  (Proof that everyone got the memo.)  But I was still slightly surprised by a few of the raves this concert received.  Christophers' special genius was often in evidence, and both the chorus and the orchestra at their best were beyond superb.  But as I've said before, they're simply the best chorus in the region (so by now I expect to be stunned); yet Friday's opener wasn't their best night; there were more than a few moments (particularly around entrances) that simply weren't as clean as they could/should have been (and that's important, particularly in Bach).

This was true in the strings as well, here and there (the winds were at their frisky best, however, throughout); more problematic was that Christophers drew all his soloists from the chorus itself - and alas, didn't really reveal any new stars there.  All of these fresh faces were blessed with intriguing vocal timbres and subtle control (that's why it's a great chorus) - but a few seemed a bit uncomfortable in the limelight, or lacked the power to fully command a space the size of Symphony.

Still I was grateful as always to hear H&H's secret weapons, soprano Teresa Wakim and alto Emily Marvosh.  Wakim, of course, is a known quantity, and she was at the top of her game Friday, hitting the lustrously pearly notes she's famous for with ease, first in Cantata 71 and later in the Magnificat.  Marvosh, in contrast, is still making her mark - although you could argue after last weekend that she has made her mark.   She was in fine voice from the start, but only grew suppler and more expressive as the evening went on, while her physical presence has never been more striking - a charming, almost mischievous gamine, she seemed to morph the Virgin into Diana, and radiated intelligent joy throughout her contributions to the Magnificat.  I have a hunch that, like Wakim, she's a great actress as well as a great singer.

Harry Christophers in action.

There were also some strong turns from reliable tenor Stefan Reed, and bass Jacob Cooper had his moments - but elsewhere the solos were variable.  As I've opined before, the central artistic problem at H&H these days is finding a team of soloists who can stand up to the chorus (perhaps even the chorus can't do that!).  Luckily, they've signed up for Messiah this year the stunning Karina Gauvin, who may be the greatest interpreter of Handel on the planet - if she can't match this chorale, no one can.

On the instrumental side, it seemed to me the horns scraped a bit more than usual (although this is inevitable with natural horns), particularly in the opening overture of the Orchestral Suite No. 3, where they're particularly exposed, and playing high in their ranges.  All this was forgotten, however, in Harry's ravishing rendition of what came next, that famous "Air on a G String," which here swelled with a slow, delicate suspense, and heartbreaking transparency.  In a word: rapture.

Later there were more high points, particularly from Wakim and Marvosh, in the relatively light  Gott ist mein König, which is not actually sacred music but was rather composed as a kind of fanfare for the town council of Mühlhausen - and which seemed to dovetail nicely with the previous buoyant dances that closed the Orchestral Suite.  Less convincing perhaps was the way Christophers pulled together  two Sinfonias and "Jesus bleibet meine Freude" into his own "suite" later in the program. But then to be honest, Bach suites are never very unified anyway, and the Sinfonia from Cantata 18 featured some truly exquisite interplay between the violas and the winds (Christophers always illuminates the structure of what he's doing, even as he makes it dance).  Certainly "Jesus" was as transporting as it should be, with the chorus seemingly buoyed on soft surges from the strings that glinted with colors from the brass.

The trumpets were in even better form during the Magnificat itself - a compact work with the range of a full symphony, the many moods of which unfolded with Christophers' characteristic mix of eloquence and passion.  Once more Wakim and Marvosh were the stand-out soloists, the winds were again delightful, and the chorus shouldered the closing verses with astonishing power and clarity.  I admit whenever these folks sing a line like "World without end, Amen," I always find myself indeed wishing the moment could go on forever.

Bach's elusive Passion

Harry Christophers conducting soloists and orchestra in the St. Matthew Passion - photo: Kyle T. Hemingway.

I've been pondering Handel and Haydn's version of Bach's St. Matthew Passion for some time now (since last weekend), and Hub Review readers know what that means: it's hard to come to a clear decision about it.   The piece itself, of course, is a monument - really a touchstone - of Western music; the Bach family referred to it as "the great Passion," and the master himself took care to execute a definitive edition, on "the finest paper available."  So I was grateful to hear the work again; to be honest, I haven't heard it in years - it was once a staple of the H&H repertory, and these performances were partly intended as a means of reconnection to this great organization's venerable past.

But again to be honest, the St. Matthew Passion is also a bear, sprawling, multi-foliate, and perhaps even somewhat incoherent in its ambitious attempt to weave together contrasting personal, communal, and historical visions of the tale of Christ's crucifixion.  Now before you start screaming - a lot of great works of art are somewhat incoherent (people have made that argument about Hamlet, for instance); but the aesthetic gaps loom particularly wide in the St. Matthew Passion, and I'm not sure that conductor Harry Christophers (brilliant as much of his work was here), quite bridged them in these performances.


Here's why. St. Matthew basically runs along three parallel tracks - center stage is the story of the gospel, partly declaimed by an "Evangelist" (Matthew himself, we assume), and partly enacted by its various players, and always crackling with a remarkable sense of musical and emotional drama.  Mr. Christophers is one of the most naturally dramatic of our local conductors - and he was blessed with a truly riveting Evangelist in Joshua Ellicott, and a tragically self-aware Jesus in Matthew Brook; so all of this was absolutely terrific.

Then there are the familiar (and gorgeously moving) chorales, drawn from existing hymns and folk-songs, which convey the response of the community - or perhaps history - to these events.  Here a larger chorus than the core Christophers usually works with delivered slightly less than the pin-point accuracy we're used to hearing from Handel and Haydn; but after suffering through Missa Solemnis at the BSO a few weeks ago, I thought they still sounded pretty damn good (and after all, they were singing in German).  More problematic was Christophers' decision to place the smaller solos (done by chorus members) around the stage - some of these positions, it turned out, revealed unexpected acoustic quirks in Symphony Hall. ( I am happy to report, however, that the members of the Young Men's and Young Women's Choruses, grouped at the sides of the stage, sounded fine.)

But then there are the solo recitatives and arias that stud the piece, in which we essentially eavesdrop on Bach's personal response to the Easter story; and here the performance faltered, at least in its singing (the instrumentalists generally held to H&H's dazzling standards).  This is getting to be a familiar story, I'm afraid, where the H&H chorus and orchestra regularly outshine the soloists.  This time around, however, the two male leads, as I mentioned, were sterling, and the supporting tenor and baritone were strong; it was the women who were weaker - chiefly because one of them was Gillian Keith, who has a lovely voice, I admit, but who is one of the most superficial vocal actresses I can think of.  Here she was typically simpering and self-involved, though she did hit pretty, pearly tones; and I think it's worth noting that once again, she was literally under-dressed in a floor-length nightie and a hair-do out of Lulu.   Mezzo Monica Groop made a far better impression both in her fashion choices and vocals, which were particularly affecting in “Erbarme Dich, Mein Gott" (where she was exquisitely partnered by violinist Aisslinn Nosky).

But even she was sometimes just sweetly blank, and this was really too bad, because the arias are a rare key to what was intensely personal for Bach - his Christian faith, which was heartfelt, and perhaps even all-consuming; here, for once, the great composer doesn't attempt to conjure the music of the spheres, but rather his song of himself.  But Christophers seemed to grope for a cohesive approach to these meditations, and so even Groop resorted to a rather anodyne kind of sorrow, and the standard-classical-music-issue version of "beauty."  Given the intense, individualized commitments of Ellicott and Brook, you couldn't help but feel that something was missing - and the urgency of the performance seemed to flag.

Oddly, though, Christophers drew exquisite work from his orchestra in many of these passages.  The woodwinds are by now acknowledged as one of the glories of the H&H ensemble, but Stephen Hammer (oboe) seemed to outdo himself here, as did Christopher Krueger (flute) and Andrew Schwartz (bassoon).  The strings were likewise in fine shape; I noticed sparkling work from Laura Jeppesen on viola da gamba, and Guy Fishman on cello.  These moments, coupled with generally fine work from the chorus, and the stunning performances of Matthew Brook and particularly Joshua Ellicott, led in my mind to one of those classic glass-half-empty/half-full debates; but I think at its most passionate, this Passion was enough to make a Bach fan's cup runneth over.

Brandenburgs 3, 4 & more

Days and days have passed without my noting the lovely evening of music I heard last weekend at Jordan Hall, courtesy of the Handel and Haydn Society.  This was one of their "just us folks" evenings - all the soloists were from the Society's ranks, save conductor Ian Watson, who did double duty much of the time on harpsichord.  The program was centered on two of the Brandenburgs (3 and 4), although around these "greatest hits" of the baroque era were grouped a few pieces as obscure as the Brandenburgs are famous.  (I've never heard of Charles Avison, for instance, much less his Concerto Grosso No. 5.)  These obscurities all proved worthy -  and some, more than worthy - although the overall effect of the evening was bit like a very enjoyable lecture built around the theme, "There were many great composers in the eighteenth century, but here's why Bach was best."

The one outlier to this thesis - Henry Purcell - was actually a seventeenth-century composer of course, although his one piece on the program, "Pavane and Chacony," sounded like it could have been written by some young turk only yesterday, particularly the strangely moving pavane, which stretched dissonant suspensions almost past their breaking points (while conductor Watson allowed his players to slowly edge toward a kind of keening anarchy).  A highly unusual - and memorable - performance of a highly unusual piece.

Elsewhere, Watson (at right) cut a conducting profile that, as usual, was muscular, intelligent, and above all, heartily rhythmic; while this program didn't include any jigs or rondos, you still could have cut a rug to most of it - and it's somehow wonderful to watch a period band sway with the tunes they're playing as lustily as the Handel-and-Haydneers have learned to do.

There were, however, a few slight disappointments here and there; the Telemann Viola Concerto in G Major, for instance, was certainly lovely, but violist David Miller, though technically fastidious, didn't quite bring enough emotional expansiveness to his solos to make them transporting.  And even though much of the baroque repertoire is sourced in dance, as period music aficionados love to point out, still, dance is not the end-all (much less the be-all) of baroque music.  And so while Watson's approach often paid huge dividends, especially in the lesser works by Boyce and Avison (which proved perfectly smashing), I didn't feel it brought any new dimension to the Brandenburgs.  They danced alright, but not in any enlightening or original way; perhaps there's a subtle sense of musical space to these concerti that you can't capture through lilting rhythms alone.  I must at the same time note, however, that No. 4 was brightened by sparkling playing from Christopher Krueger and Stephen Hammer on recorder, and an almost frenzied turn by the great Christina Day Martinson on violin, and that No. 3 featured perhaps the most focused ensemble work of the program.  Still, I think it will be that grief-stricken Pavane from Purcell that I'll remember most vividly from this enjoyable evening.