Both sides now

Boston seems all but hypnotized by the antics of Shepard Fairey at the ICA these days, so it's good to remember that all around us, all the time, real artists are creating real art that does what art is always supposed to do - challenge, touch, and sustain us. A case in point was last Saturday's concert by the Sarasa Ensemble (above left), with guests Dominique Labelle and Michael Chance, under the auspices of the Boston Early Music Festival (which took the program to New York on Monday). I'm familiar with Labelle and Chance, and thought them an intriguing pairing. The good news was that the Sarasa Ensemble proved equally impressive. The concert was one of the most subtly moving evenings of music I've heard in some time, and provided memories I'll treasure for a good while to come.

Not that there wasn't an interesting aural tension between the three points of this musical triumvirate. The Sarasans (yes, I know that makes them sound like characters from Star Trek) are all about sensitive, intelligent attack, and a daring comfort level with the dissonance that sometimes shadows early music (there were some suspensions between the two violins that I'm not sure ever quite resolved). The vocalists, meanwhile, were operating in two slightly different modes - Ms. Labelle, whose sparkling instrument is as light and radiant now as it was when she was starring in Peter Sellars's Mozart operas twenty years ago, is a kind of power soprano (at least in an intimate setting) who operates within the familiar framework of classical interpretation. Mr. Chance (below right), by way of contrast, is something of a postmodern vocal actor, a countertenor whose voice is less forceful than Ms. Labelle's, but hauntingly gorgeous, and whose real specialty is conjuring mood through intelligent phrasing and highly literate emotion.

So to put it bluntly, Ms. Labelle was sun, and Mr. Chance shade, in their first duets, which included exquisite performances of selections from Handel's Teseo and his cantata "Tanti strali al sen mi scocchi." Labelle delighted and impressed; Chance beguiled and convinced. But Mr. Chance really came into his own when he went solo, with songs from Purcell's The Fairy Queen, a masque drawn from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The first thing that struck you about these pieces was that Purcell's librettist was, well, not Shakespeare. The second was that Chance managed to make the songs sound almost as if they were by the Bard, by capturing Purcell's langorous evocation of nightfall precisely, and with startling conviction. I can't think offhand of a more thoughtful vocal performance I've heard in years; it was spellbinding.

The instrumental portions of the first half of the program were no less exciting (harpsichordist Maggie Cole performed with particularly tripping brilliance a little-heard suite of dances from Handel). But these paled next to the intensity of the second half, which was given over to Pergolesi's famous Stabat Mater, his suite of songs that both depict and invoke the stricken Mary at the foot of the Cross. Here the purity of Labelle's tone was piercing - although we sensed her pushing her volume at times, just to show what she could do, as it were. Chance was more circumspect, but perhaps more actually devastating. The piece is itself simultaneously luminous and crushing, and somehow Labelle and Chance seemed to nearly embody this duality; it was hard to imagine a fuller evocation of its terrible vision.

With strings attached

I've been ignoring the Handel and Haydn Society lately, despite the fact that their spring concerts have been providing reliable pleasure, and sometimes much more - Philip Pickett's conducting of "Baroque Jewels" (combined with Nicholas Martin's light-hearted direction of several dramatic scenes) was a particular delight. But I promise all that is going to change, and what better place to start than last week's "Italian Virtuosi" concert, led by H&H concertmaster Daniel Stepner (at left), and featuring the luminous vocalist Dominique Labelle.


The program opened with concerti grossi by Corelli, Vivaldi, and Locatelli, before shifting into a slightly different mode with Handel's Il Delirio amoroso featuring Labelle. A purist might argue the evening was therefore neither entirely fish nor fowl, but I think only a specialist wouldn't have wanted a break after three (admittedly lovely) concerti grossi in a row. And to tell the truth, I wasn't entirely sold on the Corelli, which felt slightly tentative in its pacing and attack. The Vivaldi, by way of contrast, was lively and often captivating, driven as it was by an unlikely, yet lyrically bickering, dialogue between oboe (Stephen Hammer) and bassoon (Andrew Schwartz). The Locatelli was most surprising of all in its energy and depth of feeling - largely due to Stepner's own virtuosic turn as lead violin, and the obvious rapport he had with the other players (the collegiality at H&H remains one of its central strengths).

Then came Handel's Delirio, which is a kind of one-act-opera-for-one, in which the soprano provides her own scenic description, narrative, recitative, and aria. The text is a variant of the Orpheus myth, although this time it's the nymph Chloris who laments the death of her beloved Thyrsis and descends to the underworld to seek him. Once discovered, Thyrsis turns out to be something of a clod, but that doesn't deter the clever Chloris, who recommends a dip in the river Lethe to wash away any bad feelings - indeed, to wash away memory itself. The piece concludes with a poignant evocation of love after death in Elysium, with the strangely equivocal words, "If an eclipsed sun's bright light was no longer seen, at least it was seen in the imagination."

Okay, whatever works, Chloris. The sun hardly seemed in eclipse, however, when essayed by the radiant voice of Dominique Labelle (at right). Utterly secure in pitch, yet astonishingly fluid in her technique, and with a golden tone that bordered on the opulent, Labelle delivered one of the most memorable vocal performances in recent Boston history. She projects a solid, intelligent presence that perhaps wasn't ideal for the role, but her instrument - and its gorgeously warm classical balance - basically made any dramatic quibbles moot. When it comes to Handel, I'd say she has few peers - and while I don't see her listed in next year's H&H season, I'm hoping we'll be seeing her very soon after that.