Jephtha resurrected at Handel and Haydn

Harry Christophers leads Jephtha in Disney Hall. Photo: Brian van der Brug, Los Angeles Times.

I'm late with an appreciation of Handel and Haydn's stunning performance of Jephtha, Handel's final oratorio (and one of his greatest). I heard it over a week ago, in fact; but frankly, its impact still lingers.  Indeed, in some ways this Jephtha may have been the finest hour of artistic director Harry Christopher's already-remarkable tenure; it was a model of internalized tragic emotion expressed with exquisite musical poise.  And certainly it marked the most impressive roster of soloists I have yet seen grace the Society's stage - at last they have the people up front to match the people in back, i.e., their by-now-legendary chorus. This version also hinted at the overwhelming importance of rehearsal time - and, actually, performance time; Boston heard Jephtha only after it had toured the West Coast (including a touchdown at Disney Hall, above), and the consequent coherence and depth of the Society's interpretation was noted by many.

Certainly Jephtha deserves the extra attention. It has largely slipped from the active repertory (the Society itself hadn't performed it since 1867!), I suppose because it boasts only a few show-stoppers (although at least one aria, the ravishing "Waft her, angels, thro' the skies" is often heard in recitals, and others should be).  The oratorio makes up for its lack of superficial fireworks, however, in subtlety, dramatic insight, and (for lack of a better word) sheer profundity.  It tells the story of the Old Testament hero Jephtha (although the story is an archetypal one, and appears in many cultures), who rashly promises Yahweh that if he prevails in battle, he will sacrifice the first thing to meet his eyes upon his return.  That thing, of course, turns out to be his only daughter, the beloved Iphis.

Hence submission to the cruel demands of inscrutable Fate (be it of Jewish, Christian, or any other persuasion) forms the terrible crux of Jephtha.  And in an added twist of musical fate, Handel himself was struck down by affliction during its composition - his vision began to fail due to a botched cataract operation, and his original manuscript bears testament to a long pause after the completion of "How dark, o Lord, are thy decrees"(ironically enough) with the heartbreaking note, in the master's handwriting, "Unable to go on owing to weakening of the sight of my left eye."

Handel did, however, eventually complete the score - and even conducted its premiere in Covent Garden.  Perhaps an angel intervened, as one does in the Jephtha libretto (by Rev. Thomas Morrell), which deviates from the Old Testament in explicitly granting poor Iphis a reprieve from death, if she dedicates her virginity to God.

Joélle Harvey, a talent to watch

Perhaps it should have been unsurprising, then, that the "find" of the concert turned out to be its Iphis, Joélle Harvey (right), a young soprano who is undoubtedly on the cusp of a major career (indeed, H&H has already signed her for a return engagement next year).  Ms. Harvey's tone is of  almost unbelievably luminous purity - a good thing, too, as many of her arias are utterly exposed - and even at the top of her register she can waft a vocal line thro' the skies at something close to a whisper.  Ms. Harvey also proved a subtle dramatic actress, and was able to convincingly convey both her love for her betrothed, Hamon, and her contradictory willingness to sacrifice herself for the sake of Israel.  Hers was a performance to remember.

Only a small step behind was mezzo Catherine Wyn-Rogers as Storgè, Iphis' mother, who skillfully hinted at sorrowful portents early on, and then was absolutely riveting as she desperately begged for her daughter's life (Wyn-Rogers is also coming back next season, I'm happy to report).  Meanwhile, in the title role, tenor Robert Murray was less commanding, oddly, than his wife or daughter, but his Jephtha, though perhaps an unconvincing warrior, nevertheless grew on me as the character's psychological torment increased. Indeed, Mr. Murray's almost-intellectual interpretation proved, in the end, quite harrowing; particularly in the famous recitative "Deeper, and deeper still . . .," his insights into the role mapped well to the sense of introversion latent in the score (which perhaps in turn maps to Handel's own private struggles).

There was still more good news in the supporting roles.  As Iphis' betrothed, Hamor, countertenor William Purefoy proved exquisitely matched to Harvey in their duets, while baritone Woodrow Bynum stepped down from his usual place in the chorus to sing with startling authority as Jepththa's brother Zebul. The reliable Teresa Wakim, another mainstay of the chorale, likewise impressed as the angel who spares Iphis' life. Together these two give some idea of the talent on tap these days in the H&H chorus, which sang - as they always do - with remarkable clarity, utter commitment, and superbly sensitive dynamics. Indeed, now they seem able to communicate complicated moods in a way few choruses can - their reading of the poignant phrase, "Whatever is, is right," for instance, seemed to encompass every interpretation of the line: its frustration and pain seemed locked in a search for triumph through acquiescence, which is precisely the right idea.

Conductor Christophers has a lot to do with all of this, of course - he's a positive genius at sublimating intense emotion within graceful rhetoric (a peculiarly British talent, if you ask me), which makes him perhaps the ideal conductor of Handel.  His Jephtha (which he had carefully edited, btw) seemed perfectly poised between several artistic poles: at times it nodded toward the drama of opera; at others, toward the rhetoric of oratorio - and at still others, toward the private world of internal dialogue.  That Christophers kept these many oppositions in balance, and in organic harmony, was remarkable.  As was the playing of the H&H period instrument orchestra, which has rarely sounded so vibrant or responsive.  The performance was memorable enough that many around me were openly wondering whether this version was to be recorded.  If there are no such plans, there should be; this could be close to a definitive Jephtha.

Variations on Vivaldi at H&H

Ian Watson at the keyboard in a previous Handel and Haydn performance.

As the old joke goes, Vivaldi didn't write five hundred concertos, he wrote one concerto five hundred times.  Okay, not entirely fair - but in a nutshell, that's the problem with many a program devoted to the oeuvre of the "Red Priest" (the red-headed Vivaldi's vivid nickname) who may have contributed more to this particular musical form than any other composer; the works are always wonderful at first, but by the end of the performance a sense of relentless similarity inevitably sets in.

Last weekend the Handel and Haydn Society largely dodged that problem, however, with its "Vivaldi Virtuosi," a cannily curated concert that contrasted works by the "Prete Rosso" with lesser-known lights of his era - and at the finale, threw aside the early concerto's "fast-slow-fast" regimentation entirely for a beautifully integrated set of variations by Francesco Geminiani on the familiar theme of "La Follia."

The concert also served as a welcome showcase for the expert H&H string section, which hasn't held the spotlight for a while.  Led by harpsichordist Ian Watson (photo above, in action), a mainstay of the Society on the keyboard, this stripped-down ensemble performed virtuosically indeed - even if there were a few hiccups here and there.

To be honest, the stately opening of the initial Concerto Grosso (by Charles Avison, after Scarlatti) proved slightly fuzzy - it wasn't until first violinist Aisslinn Nosky took over the second movement with true fury (it's even labeled "Con furia") that things suddenly caught fire.  And it seemed whenever Nosky was in the spotlight, playfully nudging things along, the ensemble was focused and committed - indeed, sometimes she seemed to be almost acting the role of co-conductor, and later her influence likewise seemed to simultaneously support and challenge the three soloists who joined her (Christina Day Martinson, Abigail Karr and Susanna Ogata) for V's Concerto in B Minor for Four Violins.

The Avison was followed by Vivaldi's Concerto for Two Cellos in G Minor, and one soon got a sense of the shape of the program: Vivaldi would serve as the familiar, pulsing spine, from which the other composers (Durante, Locatelli, and Geminiani) would branch in intriguing variations.  Actually, the double-cello concerto more than pulsed, it all but thrusted, and soloists Guy Fishman and Sarah Freiberg, though their instruments sang in quite different timbres, gave it their all, and conjured a beguiling, if dark, duet (although Fishman seemed visibly displeased with a glitch or two in his own performance early on).

The mood immediately brightened with the buoyant Concerto V in A Major from Francesco Durante, which opened with a spritzily lyrical Presto, followed by an almost eerily misty Largo.  This only made me want to hear more from Durante - indeed, as concerto tumbled after concerto, I began to find myself looking forward to the non-Vivaldi items on the program; they were generally fresher and more eccentric than the pieces from the master's assembly line (Pietro Locatelli's Introduttione in D Major, for instance, came teasingly close to the edge of dissonance).  One exception to this general rule was the Red Priest's own seemingly improvised Sonata for Violin and Basso Continuo, a curiosity marked by brief movements and a free lyricism, which was expertly played by Nosky, Fishman, and Watson (whose harpsichord for once wasn't swallowed by the surrounding texture).  Its quirky, offhand appeal was amusingly summed up by Watson's ad lib to the audience, "The first part sounds made up.  Then there's a quick bit, followed by a slow bit, then another quick bit."

Of course there were other marvelous moments from Vivaldi; in his Sinfonia Il coro dell Muse, for instance, the whole string section seems to be tiptoeing behind the soloist in a delightfully long stretch of pizzicato, and the concluding Allegro wraps with an intriguing sense of anticlimax.   Still, the sense of variations on a steady theme was only broken by Geminiani's Concerto Grosso in D Minor, La Follia, which is itself (ironically enough) a set of variations, but so densely interwoven that it coheres as a gripping mood piece.  It's widely heralded as Geminiani's best work, and it may well have been the best work on this entire program.  Nosky was once more at her muscular best, and the ensemble moved as if one; folly or not, it ended the concert on a exciting high note.

Egarr's, and Beethoven's, Seventh

Richard Egarr

There are very few sure things in this life, but Richard Egarr standing at the podium is surely one of them.  His versions of Beethoven's Eighth, and Haydn's "The Clock," in Handel and Haydn's previous seasons, linger in my memory as among of the most original interpretations of a classic I've ever heard.  So my expectations ran high last weekend, when Egarr took the stage, again at Handel and Haydn, to take on two masterpieces, Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A Major and Beethoven's Seventh Symphony.

And I'll admit I was not disappointed.  It was pretty fantastic. The Clarinet Concerto was merely superb; the Seventh was thrilling - although not, perhaps, quite the full-bore re-invention that Egarr achieved with the Eighth.  This was more a probing investigation that turned the work into a personal statement of painful liberation; in effect, over its course you could feel Egarr painting a harrowing portrait of the tormented composer himself.

Of course he had the huge advantage of working with period instruments; after recently sitting through thoughtfully lumbering versions of the Second, Third, and Fifth from Daniel Barenboim and Vladimir Jurowski, it felt like heaven to hear Beethoven done by a nimble ensemble, in an atmosphere more like a salon than a stadium.  With period instruments (particularly under Egarr's direction), the orchestra becomes less an amplifier of power chords, and more of a ruminative intellectual group - indeed, the subtleties and eccentricities of early instruments highlight the almost conversational quality of classical and early romantic music.  The tapestry of statements, repeats, hesitations, echoes, and subtle shifts becomes an intimate debate, an internal dialogue; hearing Beethoven on period instruments, you can forget about World War II and (other, even more titanic) clashes, and simply listen to the music of a great mind at work.

In the Seventh, for instance, Egarr seized on the percussive sighs that punctuate the opening movement and transformed them into an organizing leitmotif for the entire work.  Thus the symphony proper only began when a single, stuttering flute - after almost failing completely (you could feel the remaining movements hanging in the balance) - found the first hopeful notes of the Vivace.  And the famous opening phrase of the second movement, beset by the same stuttering rhythm, was likewise transformed into a tragically self-aware march.  The dialogue between freedom and the weight of weary pain continued unabated; the shackles were first thrown off in the third movement - but then recalled poignantly, and transcended in triumph; and then finally forgotten entirely in the concluding Allegro con brio, which Wagner dubbed "the apotheosis of the dance," and which Egarr drove to the level of frenzy (the orchestra seemed to respond almost preternaturally to every gesture); the response from the crowd was almost as crazed.  But I was meanwhile wondering whether I had discerned in that finale something of the nihilistic mania that Egarr had brought to the Eighth; it occurred to me that this conductor might have an entire symphonic biography of Beethoven up his sleeve.

But I shouldn't forget about the Mozart Clarinet Concerto - the last work Mozart completed, and one which is blessed with one of his most tenderly devastating melodies (thus making it easy to imagine it a kind of unconscious requiem in its own right).  It's also intriguing, however, in that it showcases an instrument, the basset clarinet, which is all but lost to the modern orchestra (the concerto was actually written for a basset clarinet virtuoso, Anton Stadler, a friend and fellow Mason of Mozart's).  

Hoeprich and horn.

That's right: you can only  hear Mozart's last completed work as he intended it on period instruments; for the bulbous, vaguely Seussian basset clarinet has not only a richer, more plaintive tone than its modern counterpart, but also a few extra notes at the bottom of its range (which Mozart makes full use of; modern versions require a re-write to get around this obstacle).  The piece's exuberantly rippling passagework is also a challenge for any soloist; luckily, however, Handel and Haydn could turn to one of its own, Eric Hoeprich (at right), who's a specialist in the basset clarinet, and who darted dazzlingly through Mozart's most demanding sequences.  And I have to admit, his reading of the famous dying fall of the Adagio actually brought tears to my eyes, it was so gorgeous.  My only complaint was that, at least in Symphony Hall, the strings sometimes covered the basset's unique low end when Hoeprich wasn't playing at full force; so perhaps there's still half an argument for the modern clarinet here after all.

The program was filled out with a worthy, but more variable, rendition of Mozart's poignant Masonic Funeral Music (K. 477), which began with a touchingly mournful decorum, but seemed to wobble in tone despite its brief length.  Preceding all was a charming appearance by choruses from Boston Latin, Brockton High, and Lawrence High, who essayed excerpts from Handel's Utrecht Te Deum with clarity and commitment.  Handel and Haydn is making a brilliant move in including these young singers from their outreach programs in their concerts (it not only instills in them a respect for classical music, but no doubt seeds the organization's future audience).  My only comment is that the repeated success of these appearances argues for more stage time (the audience was clearly happy to listen to more from these kids) as well as more support in the program notes.  These performances are no longer experiments, I'd say; they're part of the Handel and Haydn experience - and a very enjoyable part, to boot.  Let's treat them that way. 

Handel and Haydn's Best scenes from Purcell

Henry Purcell, England's greatest composer.

Last weekend Handel and Haydn gave props to a composer they've rarely performed in the past - Henry Purcell (perhaps, as is often claimed, the greatest English composer who ever lived) - and dipped a hesitant toe into performance styles that we rarely encounter anymore, the semi-opera and masque.  This meant that the evening was instantly of considerable interest to a critic like me, who often ponders music, theatre, and opera, as well as their various intersections - and I confess that I left the performance highly intrigued, but not consistently satisfied.

This was partly because the works themselves were at times musically brilliant, but to be honest, also somewhat variable (a good deal of the concert was devoted to a masque from The Indian Queen that had to be completed by Purcell's brother Daniel, due to the composer's untimely death).  The lack of full staging for another long sequence from the same work (a kind of semi-opera by Dryden) resulted in a performance that felt rather tantalizingly un-focused (for the effect of masque, I think, is actually connected to its physicalization in a deeper way than that of opera).  The concert was also impacted by the illness of one of its stars, local light Teresa Wakim, whose absence required various roles be sung by members of the H&H chorus (amusingly, as I noted earlier this week, this fact seemed to sail right over the head of Globe critic Jeremy Eichler).  

On top of all this, I sometimes wondered whether other soloists might be suffering from a touch of the sniffles.  Tenor Zachary Wilder sounded far thinner than he had the last time I heard him; indeed, the entire top of his range sounded stretched, and he didn't have the vibrancy I recalled from earlier performances.  Likewise Wakim's replacements simply weren't singing at full force; only Margot Rood seemed in full possession of her sparkling instrument.

Jonathan Best

The great exception to this general rule was bass-baritone Jonathan Best, who made a stunning Boston debut in two of Purcell's most famous scenes: "Scene of the drunken poet" from The Fairy Queen (a kind of incidental masque devised for A Midsummer Night's Dream) and the delightful "Frost Scene" from King Arthur (again, set to a text by Dryden).  Best (at right) proved something like a force of nature - his deep, resonant baritone is the kind of voice that the word "burnished" was coined to describe, and what's more, he's an actor of startlingly command (after seeing this, I'd gladly watch him essay Falstaff, or any number of roles from Shakespeare).  I'm actually not sure I've ever encountered a singer this talented who is also an actor of this stature; Best is nothing less than a phenomenon.

Indeed, in some of these roles he was literally a force of nature - in Purcell's "Frost Scene" from King Arthur, the baritone portrayed "The Cold Genius," a personification of nature in winter, who is stirred from beds of snow to life (and spring) by the power of love.  The vignette, and Purcell's music, are built around the amusing similarity between shivery coughs and the familiar staccato stroke of baroque strings - and the results are deeply bewitching in the manner of the oldest fairy tales. (The score also features perhaps the only fully-sung sneeze in the choral repertoire.) And Best was irresistible, as he was in the even tougher role of the drunken (but self-aware) poet from The Fairy Queen.

Elsewhere the chorus shone brightest.  Purcell was a mysteriously powerful choral writer, and there are some stunning choral passages in The Indian Queen, all of which got the full Harry Christophers treatment here.  Best was in continued fine form, of course (although he actually seemed to be sight-singing at times), and the well-known duet for "Two Aerial Spirits" was given a charming rendition by Margot Rood and Erika Vogel; there were also strong solos from Woodrow Bynum and Donald Wilkinson.  But alas, Christophers didn't draw his usual level of precision from the instrumental ensemble.  The deceptively simple, lightly-dancing rhythms of Purcell are tricky; their casual grace requires a seemingly offhand (but actually utterly precise) syncopation.  Here, however, things were a little too loose at times - although the winds were in better shape than the strings, and Bruce Hall sparkled reliably on the trumpet.  I'd have to say this proved one of the shaggier H&H concerts I've encountered; but its high points were memorable, and I was happy to be introduced to both Jonathan Best and some of the more obscure aspects of Purcell's achievement.

Dear Jeremy Eichler: This is what Teresa Wakim looks like

For future reference.

Sometimes the disinterest with which the Globe arts staff views its hometown is almost embarrassing.

Just a few weeks ago, a seemingly ignorant Jeffrey Gantz innocently gave away the big reveal at the core of the Huntington's Our Town.  And in today's paper, Jeremy Eichler actually reviews a performance that wasn't there, in last night's Handel and Haydn rendering of Purcell's The Indian Queen.

Eichler gives the concert a good notice (a surprise, as he has often sniffed at H&H), and I'd agree in general with his assessment - you should go see the last performance, at Sanders Theatre this Sunday.

The odd thing about the review, however, is that it praises a singer who wasn't there. The lovely and talented Teresa Wakim (at left) is a mainstay of Boston's vocal scene - indeed, she is one of its leading sopranos, whom I've reviewed or mentioned 15 times in the last four years. She has sung at Handel and Haydn, Boston Baroque, Blue Heron - in fact almost everywhere.

Alas, illness prevented her from singing at Handel and Haydn last night.   But Jeremy Eichler seems to think she did anyway!  In his review, he announces that "Teresa Wakim sang with crystalline tone and graceful musicality."  So apparently poor Ms. Wakim was warbling with crystalline tone through a bout with the flu.

An honest mistake, you say, easily explained by his not reading (or not receiving) a program insert? Not really - although that probably contributed to the flub.  For Wakim was actually replaced by three different members of the Handel and Haydn chorus - Sonja Tengblad, Jessica Cooper and Brenna Wells, all accomplished singers in their own rights, took over the various solos she would have sung.

So did Eichler somehow not notice that three different ladies marched downstage at various times to take over Wakim's duties at different junctures? Did only one of them impress him? Or did he think they were all named Teresa Wakim?  Enquiring minds want to know!

Sigh.  I don't know what's more depressing: that Jeremy Eichler is so out of touch with our classical music scene that he doesn't know who Teresa Wakim is (which would basically be like my not knowing who Karen MacDonald is) - or that he was so disconnected from the performance in front of him that he never scanned it against the cast list in the program.

All I can say - Teresa, you sound even better when you're actually singing!

So get well soon, my dear!

Messiah at Handel and Haydn Society

Our annual Messiah season kicked off in a major way last weekend with the Handel and Haydn version, which in many ways reached a new artistic peak for that venerable organization.  This year H&H engaged a world-class interpreter of Handel, Canadian soprano Karina Gauvin, as a soloist - and she delivered and then some; indeed, her reading of the soprano arias probably counts as the most subtly expressive I've ever heard.  It turns out that Ms. Gauvin isn't quite as powerful throughout her gorgeous range as I'd hoped (the projection of a voice is one thing that's particularly hard to gauge from recordings); but this slight gap amounted only to the difference between being enchanted and ravished. And I was utterly enchanted; Handel holds the soprano back until his setting of those lovely verses from Luke in which the angels bring good tidings of great joy, and Ms. Gauvin did, in this scene, seem all but angelic.  My vote is to have her back every year.

As longtime Hub Review readers know, Ms. Gauvin's presence largely filled a persistent gap at Handel and Haydn, where the salient artistic problem usually revolves around finding soloists who can hold their own against a chorus which is now so consistently terrific that it may count as the most reliable musical organization in the city.  And they were at the top of their game (as usual) through the length of Messiah - perfect intonation and crisp diction in rich, vibrant timbres - the works; this is the Rolls Royce of Boston chorales.

By now I've reviewed close to half a dozen Messiahs from artistic director Harry Christophers; as I recall, it was the first of these, back in 2007, during H&H's search for a new director, that made me go, "Wow- this is their guy!" (so you can imagine how pleased I was when they agreed).  And I'd say his basic approach to this masterpiece hasn't varied much.  Although every year he tinkers with this or that, the Christophers Messiah is reliably a piece of heartfelt eloquence, a passionate flower of the Anglican tradition that all but glows with emotion.  It is grand without being gaudy, light but still measured, and floating rhetorically in a spiritual space in which church and state can humanely overlap.  In the end, Christophers understands that Messiah is a poem, indeed a kind of valedictory, assembled mosaic-like from lines (and sometimes snippets) from centuries of sacred writing that delineate the transformation of the Jewish idea of an anointed savior into the Christian concept of a divine redeemer.

Now whether you believe in the Christian idea of God Incarnate or not (I don't), it's hard not to be moved by the power of Handel's (and librettist Charles Jennens') grandly detailed conception.  And somehow Christophers manages to channel their sense of spiritual grace for a secular age; his Messiah seems to revel in its roots, its connectedness to the best of a glorious tradition.  (Perhaps that's why the H&H crowd still instinctively stands for the "Hallelujah Chorus.")

Of course - the Christophers version has its quirks, chief among them the repeated presence of a countertenor in the alto role.  This year's model was Daniel Taylor, who I admit did boast a hauntingly mournful middle range.  But we got quite enough of that color, and its attendant dolor, in "He was despised and rejected," (which this year Christophers took at a crawl), and elsewhere Taylor seemed unable to modulate into the hopefulness of "Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened," much less the joy of "O Death, where is thy sting?"

Luckily, the other soloists offered more variety.  Tenor James Gilchrist had an eccentric way with Handelian melisma, to be sure, but he had a surprising power at his command, and something like Old-Testament thunder in such recitatives as "All they that see Him laugh Him to scorn." And then suddenly, with "Thy rebuke hath broken His heart" Gilchrist was indeed, heartbreaking.  Almost as good was Sumner Thompson, a local favorite of mine, who isn't quite a bass, but who nevertheless could summon a stern, old-school authority, as well as an unexpectedly poignant lyricism in the aria that I feel is the most beautiful in the whole oratorio, "The trumpet shall sound."

The trumpets do sound, of course, from all over Symphony Hall in the H&H version, and as played by Jesse Levine and Paul Perfetti, they were glorious this year.  The winds were once again on point as well, and the strings their familiar agile selves; meanwhile the reliable John Grimes brought his usual rolling flair to the timpani.  It was another grand and memorable edition in what has become a 194-year tradition at Handel and Haydn.

Labadie reaches Jupiter with Handel and Haydn

Labadie in action.

When I first heard French-Canadian conductor Bernard Labadie a few years back, I wrote, "Remember that name -  and if you get a chance to hear him . . . by all means take it."

Well, since then a lot of people have had that chance, and as a result Labadie's career has exploded, with debuts at the Met, Tanglewood, and all over the map.  He returned to the Hub last weekend in a concert with Handel and Haydn that might have been dubbed "Mozart in Context" - and quickly demonstrated that he's still got it going on, and how; his closing rendering of the "Jupiter" Symphony, conducted from memory, was the kind of home-run that brings a crowd immediately to its feet, shouting and stamping.   In fact, I admit I have a serious musical man-crush on this guy.  Smarts, sympathy, superb control and command - Labadie's got it all, plus he does what I call "full-body" conducting: the musical cues seem to ripple through every fiber of his being, so his connection with the orchestra is dramatically palpable.  With Labadie conducting, a concert is also a show.

Of course, this was also a wonderful musical statement, thoughtfully programmed and exquisitely interpreted.  The idea was clearly to compare and contrast the evening's warhorse, the "Jupiter" (No. 41) - the one H&H could count on to draw a crowd - with obscurities by the forgotten Henri-Joseph Rigel and Joseph Martin Kraus, as well as a minor Haydn symphony, No. 26 ("Lamentatione") - all three variants of what has been dubbed the "Sturm und Drang" Germanic school (with, in the case of Rigel, a lovely French largo sandwiched between two Teutonic allegros).

This is where the curation of the concert did run into an intriguing set of cross-currents, it seemed to me.  Rigel, Kraus, and Haydn seemed to be speaking to each other as much as to Mozart; or perhaps Haydn was speaking to them (although the final movement of the Kraus at least clearly counts as proto-Mozart).  And certainly both Rigel and Kraus intrigued as demonstrations of just how alluring great craft can be - I was much taken with the second and third movements of the Rigel in particular - still, did either have a unique "voice"?  It seemed that Haydn turned that corner rather early for the form; the flowing second movement of Lamentatione (partly derived from an Easter chant) exudes a depth that Rigel and Kraus lack, and the third movement abounds in that sense of subtle, almost conversational surprise that typifies this great composer.

Perhaps simply ordering the concert by composition date might have clarified all this.  At any rate, under Labadie's attentive eye, the orchestra performed all three with sensitive passion, and a pleasing sense of forward momentum - but it wasn't until the "Jupiter" that everything came together. Which is indeed appropriate, as the "Jupiter" seems to pull its entire period together and then kick it up a notch. The symphony is a landmark for many reasons; its simple size and grandeur (hence its nickname), the unprecedented complexity and inspiration of its textures, the way in which it shifts the emphasis of the form to the final movements (which here conclude with a truly stunning fugue) - all these perfections still stun audiences today.  And Labadie and his players seemed in complete command of every facet of the piece; Mozart's memorable motifs seemed to expand and intertwine just as they should, and then coalesced at the finale with a truly thrilling force.  Sometimes Labadie seemed about to levitate, in fact, as the momentum built; the strings were exquisitely supple, the winds superlative - it was the kind of performance that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand on end.  What can I say?  If you get a chance to hear Bernard Labadie conduct - by all means take it!

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.

Change of Seasons

Violinist Aisslinn Nosky

Last weekend's Handel and Haydn concerts may have been devoted to The Four Seasons, but there was only one major change of musical season during the program - the shift from one sensibility (Harry Christophers') to another (violinist Aisslinn Nosky's) that occurred after intermission, when the concert moved from several pieces by Handel, Corelli and John Christian Bach to Vivaldi's famously seasonal quartet of concerti.

The first half was a small miracle; the second half - well, it was interesting, and I don't mean that in a pejorative sense.  It was interesting; Handel and Haydn seemed determined to deliver something that was definitely not your father's Four Seasons - and so swung for the bleachers in all kinds of ways; whether the resulting performance cohered or not I'd say is an open question; but I was certainly held the whole time.

But first, the luminous half, when the stripped-down orchestra delivered one ravishing reading after another.  Christophers had his string section play standing up, the better to conjure the buoyancy of dance, but always kept the resulting rhythmic power under delicate, attentive control.   The pieces rocked, most definitely, but were also colored with a mature sophistication.  Handel's Overture to "Agrippina," for instance - which we just heard a year ago at Boston Lyric Opera, on modern instruments - here sounded far more evocative than it had then; its majesty seemed almost wounded, and shot through with melancholy; it seemed to be calling to us from some lost, ancient age (which it was).

Likewise the performances of two of Corelli's concerti (both from Op. 6, Nos. 3 and 4) were gorgeously rendered, utterly transparent and always exquisitely detailed.  In contrast, J.C. Bach's forceful Symphony in G minor felt like a whirlwind - the tumbling first movement was so powerful, in fact, it drew a round of spontaneous applause at its finish.

The same energy powered The Four Seasons, but this time felt unfettered by any sense of shaping control.  Nosky is a marvel, and obviously a showman (her magenta 'do and tuxedo-tails tell you as much), but Christophers here seemed to simply hand over the artistic reins to her much of the time, and I'm afraid she doesn't yet know how to build an interpretation from her instincts.  They're great, daredevil instincts, to be sure; this was a Four Seasons which was unafraid to revel in the work's dissonance, and in which Vivaldi's summery suspensions (as well as Nosky's own rather meandering cadenzas) sometimes seemed to hang in the air like a blazing haze.  Likewise the more rollicking sections were sped up to a gallop and beyond - indeed, sometimes Nosky made promises of speed she couldn't quite keep, at least not with perfect intonation.  And everywhere she and the other players threw themselves into their bowing with full-body abandon; I have expected Nosky to smash her instrument over somebody's head at the climax of "Winter."

So I'll say this much - this was one of the most "extreme" version of The Four Seasons I've ever encountered.  But the same artistic questions dogged this performance as sank the shenanigans of Red Priest up on the North Shore this summer: gonzo alone doesn't amount to an interpretation.  To be fair, Nosky wasn't just pursuing technical glory - she was pushing individual musical ideas to their limits; this wasn't just Red Priest-style show-boating.  And perhaps The Four Seasons only suffered in comparison with the luminous playing that had immediately preceded it.  But then Harry Christophers is just a little more seasoned, isn't he (sorry).  Give Nosky time, and I think we can expect wonders from her, too.

Balancing act

Rinaldo Alessandrini in action.

What makes the period music movement so exciting is that it's in such ferment that there are dozens of different musical voices and visions jostling for space within it.  (There's really no comparable spectrum of interpretation among conductors of the "standard" repertoire - the BSO may vary a bit in quality from week to week, but it generally moves within a circumscribed artistic horizon of "excellence.")

And happily, we often get to see that ferment bubbling at the Handel and Haydn Society; whenever artistic director Harry Christophers is away (no slouch himself!) the Society invites major international figures like Richard Egarr and Roger Norrington to the podium, who reliably shake things up musically and intellectually.

Last week's H&H concerts proved no exception to this tradition, as the Society hosted Italian conductor and keyboard master Rinaldo Alessandrini (above), who has been tearing up the Continent in recent years with his acclaimed "Concerto Italiano" ensemble.  The program was territory Alessandrini knew well: Pergolesi's classic setting of the Stabat Mater for two voices, as well as his lesser-known "Salve Regina" (both composed at the very end of his short life), along with two concerti: Francesco Geminiani's Concerto Grosso Op. 3, No. 3, and Bach's Keyboard Concerto in D (BMV 1054).

So - to be honest, one sits down at these events wondering, "What's going to be the big idea this time?" Well, Alessandrini - a gently intense, romantically dapper presence onstage, who conducted from the harpsichord - says his passion is for “cantabilità.” Now this loosely translates as "singability," so it doesn't tell you much; but what was evident from performance was that Alessandrini is all about balance, detail, and harmonious proportion.  Hence these performances were models of delicate, graceful control - there were no large, daring gestures - and little impish eccentricity, either; refinement was the order of the day.  If there was a larger artistic statement to be gleaned from Alessandrini's finely-tuned engineering, I'd say it had something to do with another kind of balance: the intriguing way in which the text of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater exists in tension with its musical setting - which, as this concert convincingly argued, owed much to the new "singing" Italian style.  In other words, Pergolesi's suffering Virgin Mary stands (the Latin title literally translates as "Standing Mother") with one foot in the sacred but the other in the secular.

And right now, to be honest, a commitment to graceful balance is a perfect fit for the newly-remodeled H&H string section (which dominated these concerti).  I commented after the H&H season opener on how artistic director Christophers had brought a new sheen to the period orchestra's sound; and if anything, under Alessandrini the strings sounded more focused and flexible than ever; there was simply gorgeous playing on offer here, particularly in the Geminiani "Adagio."  (Unsurprisingly, the instrumentalists returned the love Alessandrini had clearly lavished on them with a stomping ovation at the concert's close.)

But you know me; I had my nits to pick.  The program was a thoughtful one, with a subtle and convincing argument tracing influences and echoes back and forth between the three composers on offer.  Still, if the intent was to highlight the emergence of the harpsichord as a solo instrument in the Bach, then I'd have to say its musical line still sounded slightly too submerged - not because of Alessandrini's playing, which was one sparkling, light-fingered flow, but rather because his conducting duties meant that his back was to the audience, and so even though the lid was off the harpsichord, its sound couldn't quite compete in size with that of the rest of the orchestra.

Meanwhile the singing - by soprano Liesbeth Devos and mezzo Emily Righter - was likewise generally transporting, but did make you ponder certain issues in transit.  The emphasis on proportion and "singability" meant that this Stabat Mater - which is, after all, rooted in Mary's suffering before the Cross - was only occasionally as piercing as I've heard in other performances (perhaps because things sounded a little rushed in places), although both vocalists impressed with the richness and gravity of their interpretations.  The strikingly statuesque Righter - slightly overdressed in a lavishly ruched turquoise gown - employed more vibrato than you usually hear in period performance, but her voice has a remarkably burnished, almost tragic lustre, and she seemed to go deeper emotionally than anyone else on stage.  Meanwhile Devos was perhaps more agile throughout her range (which glittered most at its top), but sometimes sounded as if she sympathized, but could not identify, with her text.  Such are the pitfalls, I suppose, of secular and sacred "balance"!  The good news is that the voices of these two did blend exquisitely - in purely musical terms, their timbres mapped memorably to the kind of evocative equilibrium Alessandrini seemed to be seeking.

Last weekend brought the season opener for the Handel and Haydn Society, and the return to our fair city of artistic director Harry Christophers. By now the success that I predicted for Christophers upon his appointment has become a foregone conclusion - ticket sales are at their highest level in a decade, new recordings have been met with lavish praise, and Christophers' contract has been extended through 2016 (meaning he will guide the Society through the entirety of its bicentennial celebration).

At the center of this story have been the spectacular results Christophers quickly achieved with the H&H chorus; but that success has been shadowed by a slower, more complicated process with the orchestra - particularly the string section.  Much-loved (and well-connected) musicians have been asked to step aside, and local favorites have been passed over in promotions; I myself wondered at some (but hardly all) of these decisions.  At any rate, by now the re-alignment is complete: Canadian Aisslinn Nosky (at left) now leads a re-ordered violin section, while Guy Fishman has assumed the role of principal cellist.

And while I think Christophers has clearly had to pay a political price for these decisions, artistically I have to admit they're already paying off. Nosky's playing is as striking as her hair, and at last Friday's concert, the H&H strings sang with a clean, vibrant fluency they've never quite had before.

But then I sometimes got the sneaky feeling that Christophers had selected his program with the express purpose of showing off his new toy (as it were).  The centerpiece was Mozart's Symphony No. 40, which of course depends utterly upon the strings - and even the fortepiano concerti the conductor had chosen for the first half (Haydn's F-Major Concertino, and Mozart's Concerto No. 22, both essayed by the brilliant Kristian Bezuidenhout) aren't merely showcases for the piano but also extended conversations between keyboard and orchestra.

And then there were the two overtures (to "Autumn," and "Winter") from Haydn's The Seasons, both of which spotlight the strings.  "Autumn" is sweet, but brief as Indian summer - "Winter," however, is a starkly dramatic tour de force, and the orchestra simply played the hell out of it.  The always-welcome Bezuidenhout, meanwhile, was far more sparkling and spontaneous here than when I saw him last spring.  When this pianist is at his best (and he mostly was in this program) everything feels as if it's being improvised by a genius on the fly; Bezuidenhout sounds almost intoxicated by his own talent, and yet always keeps his touch under exquisite control - it's like listening to a kind of pure, baroque jazz, as a friend of mine once put it.  But then perhaps Bezuidenhout was as drunk on his instrument as he was on his music; he had chosen (with a lot of defensive excuse-making), a fortepiano built by Rod Regier after Viennese originals from almost fifty years after Mozart's heyday.   I suppose an early-music specialist would quibble at that, but the moment I heard this instrument's tone I confess I didn't give a damn about its provenance!

Then, after a solid turn through another worthy, if slightly obscure, overture (from Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf's oratorio Esther) came Mozart's familiar 40th, which was more richly rendered here than I think H&H might ever have managed before.  I wouldn't argue that Christophers charted an emotional arc through the whole symphony - which extends from a hauntingly anxious opening to a passionate resolution in which nothing feels at all resolved. Here the separate movements felt like fully-rounded, slightly-disconnected classical entities (which is where attention to detail can sometimes lead).  But minute to minute, the performance was nonetheless ravishing.  The strings sounded sublime, vibrant and evocative yet with a precise sense of balance, and the winds and horns responded with superb grace.  Clearly Mr. Christophers has successfully completed the next step in his artistic mission at Handel and Haydn.  We can't wait for the rest of the journey.

It's hard to imagine a world in which every Sunday the greatest composer of the age (or, if you agree with the Times, the greatest composer of all time) showed up at the door of a provincial church in Germany with a brand-new work of genius. But that's what happened at the Church of St. Thomas in Liepzig during the early years of Johann Sebastian Bach's tenure as music director. Through much of the 1720's and beyond (Bach held the post from 1723 till his death in 1750), the congregation enjoyed a fresh masterpiece at each week's service; it's estimated Bach wrote over 300 of these cantatas (or six years' worth of Sundays), of which about two-thirds survive.

The cantatas thus serve as a vast field of discovery for a Bach naïf like me.  Only a handful have achieved what you might call "fame," but let's just say I've yet to hear a bad one!  Which means there's always a "new" cantata out there that's going to be wonderful. And last weekend (I'm so late with this review the performers probably thought I'd forgotten about them), I got to hear three in a row with which I'm unfamiliar, (Nos. 37, 92, and 97) in "The Bach Experience,"a set of gorgeous renditions by the Handel and Haydn Society chorus and period orchestra, led by Bach specialist Mary Greer. What made the performances particularly special, however, were the soloists (particularly the male soloists); like Boston Baroque, this season Handel and Haydn seems to have been saving its best soloists for last.

These included the forceful bass Sumner Thompson, who had just triumphed as a baritone in  Les Indes Galantes, as well as lyric tenor William Ferguson, who I think may be the strongest tenor I've yet heard sing with the Society (and he's got the wide-ranging international career to back up that assessment). The women were no slouches either: mezzo Brenda Patterson had an exquisitely rich and complex tone (but not quite as much power as I would have liked), while Deborah Selig's more sizeable soprano was radiant in its bloom,despite a slight edge at its very top.

The cantatas were performed in order both numerically and chronologically, (even though the numbering system has nothing to do with the dates of their composition); 37 and 92 are nestled closely together, in 1724 and 1725, while 97 follows nearly a decade after. It's no surprise then that 37 is the simplest in its effect - written for the Feast of the Ascension, it's essentially a glowing meditation on the blessedness of the faithful.  No. 92, on the other hand, is full of sturm und drang - a literal sea-storm seems to surge in the middle of it, in fact. And 97, by way of contrast, is the most developed instrumentally; unlike the earlier cantatas, which are pretty free in form (although each revolves around the liturgical readings of the service in question) 97 is structured enough to operate as a kind of orchestral suite with voices.  Which is intriguing when one considers that its liturgical message - a quiet trust in God's grace through the vicissitudes of life - is perhaps the simplest of any of the cantatas.

Conductor Greer shaped the performances with consummate skill and thoughtfulness - although not, perhaps, with any overarching profile; these renditions were scholarly in their affect, and more attentive than interpretive.  Still, Greer drew real power from her string section during the stormy onslaught of No. 92, and a beautifully serene line from the famous violin obliggato part in No. 97 (which tenor Ferguson accompanied with sweet, simple skill).  Soprano Selig likewise excelled in her soaring aria from the same work; but the most gripping performance of the concert clearly belonged to Sumner Thompson, who seemed to ride the surges of No. 92 with desperate commitment and a burnished, resonant tone.  Faith has rarely sounded so dramatic.



Christophers, soloists, orchestra and chorus take a well-deserved bow.

Hub Review readers are no doubt getting a little bored with my continual praise of the Handel and Haydn Society. But if you were hoping that at last Harry Christophers and Co. had slipped up last weekend in their performances of Mozart's Requiem and Handel's Dixit Dominus, and that the critical monotony around here might finally be broken by a snarky little pan, I'm afraid I have to disappoint you: Harry & Co. were just as terrific as ever. Sorry!

Indeed, H&H (and the chorus in particular) has gotten so consistent of late that the only thing I wonder going into their concerts is: will the soloists measure up this time? Not quite all of them do, I'm afraid, although most of the line-up last weekend was splendid. Met power-bass Eric Owens, who recently triumphed as Alberich in the Met's new Das Rheingold, was on hand, as was rising lyric soprano Elizabeth Watts, who usually busies herself at Covent Garden or the Welsh National Opera, and who also boasted plenty of power, as well as a ravishing blush of radiant color. She was flanked by another rising British star, tenor Andrew Kennedy, who sang with passionate attack; the only slight gap in this luminous line-up was mezzo Phyllis Pancella, who had sumptuous tone but a lot of vibrato, and not quite enough volume to keep up with her cohorts.

But frankly, the chorus was the real star anyhow, particularly in Handel's Dixit Dominus, which I think many in the hall left feeling was the highlight of the program - and perhaps even a greater piece than the famous Requiem (sacrilege, I know, but I feel the Requiem is only truly brilliant in those passages we have complete from Mozart's own hand - the work was completed after his death by his student Franz Sussmäyr).  Dixit Dominus, by way of contrast, is thrilling throughout - indeed, its stern authority is pregnant with a sense of trembling foreboding only hinted at in the pronouncements of its text. And technically, it's almost stunningly complex - yet the H&H Chorus was always on point, both technically and emotionally (all the more remarkable given the urgent tempi favored by Christophers). Indeed, the solos from within the chorus - particularly those by Margot Rood, Teresa Wakim, and Woodrow Bynum - seemed as strong as anything we heard from the headliners. 

Judgment seems to have been on Mozart's mind, too, in the composing the Requiem, which in Christophers's hands rang more with warning than mourning, and which he also often took at a sometimes-blistering pace (for some sense of the committed connection this conductor brings to the stage, check out the photo at left). He slowed down, however, for some truly threatening moments in the Dies irae, while Owens triumphed in the forceful Tuba mirum and the string section broke the judgmental mood with a piercing rendition of the famous Lacrimosa.

These two titanic, back-to-back statements dominated the concert, but it would be wrong to ignore the beautiful pieces that filled out the program: Mozart's  Ave verum corpus, a short motet which I'd never heard before, but which was surpassingly lovely (with more exquisite work from the chorus), and the charming Por questa bella mano, which bass-baritone Eric Owens essayed with resonant feeling. As is sometimes the case in a period music concert, we also got to hear some unusual instrumentation - "basset horns" sang out during the Recordare of the Requiem, and  Por questa set Mr. Owens against an even deeper sound, that of the double bass obbligato - one of those early instruments you really think must have been designed by Dr. Seuss. Just watching bassist Rob Nairn attack this giant with his bow brought a sense of comedy to the performance that Owens seemed to eschew - which may have been just as well; somehow the contrast between the singer's sincerity and the player's struggles seemed wonderfully Mozartean all on its own.

Of late I've been getting a short course in the music of Tomás Luis de Victoria; the Tallis Scholars featured him prominently in their BEMF appearance last week, even as the Handel and Haydn Society paired him with Francis Poulenc in "Harry's Vocal Voyage," a program which, despite its rather buoyant title, proved a poignant face-off between the sacred music of two very different epochs. Or was it really a face-off? Sometimes it felt more like a hand-off; for under the sensitive direction of Harry Christophers, the sensibilities of Victoria and Poulenc did seem to mysteriously align across the centuries.

In some ways, this consonance shouldn't be so surpising, even though the composers are separated by roughly three hundred years. Both were obsessed with matters of faith, and wrote mostly (or only) sacred music; and both toyed with dissonance (or at least Victoria toyed with what counted as dissonance for his time). Their seeming twinship most clearly derives, however, from a shared sense of emotion pushing against structure; they consistently penned statements of faith that feel as if a rising well of mournfulness is about to spill over its enclosure of prayer and into a cascading wail of passion.

We don't know much about Victoria's private life (aside from the fact that he became a priest); we do know that tragedy sparked Poulenc's turn to the sacred. A wealthy gay bon vivant in his youth, the composer first became known as a member of the loose-knit musical alliance Les six. The death of a close friend in a car wreck, followed by a grief-stricken pilgrimage to the gaunt "Black Madonna" of Rocamadour (at left), changed all that; from then on, sacred music - or music devoted to spiritual subjects - would dominate the composer's output.

Poulenc never entirely lost his clever sensualism, it's true (in mid-career he was famously summed up as "half monk and half delinquent"), but Christophers chose for his program works that all but throbbed with grief (particularly the four "motets from a time of penitence," written soon after his friend's death).  And Christophers sculpted his selections from Victoria (particularly the gorgeous Litaniae Beatae Mariae) with a far greater sense of drama and variety than the Tallis Scholars had hazarded - indeed, he drew out a shockingly lush sensualism from pieces like Victoria's Nigra sum sed formosa (drawn from the famously erotic Song of Solomon). Of course Christophers tended to the particulars of polyphony, homophony, antiphonal singing and all the rest - he did no violence to Victoria stylistically, and the chorus sounded wonderful - but he didn't seem absorbed in the technical issues for their own sake; they were simply a means to powerful emotional ends. And he seemed to seek heightened extremes wherever he could; not for nothing did Christophers compare Victoria's musical achievement to the swirling expressionism of El Greco (whose "Nobleman with a Hand on his Chest" I chose to stand in for Victoria in the graphic above).

But then Christophers is always a bit of a period-music showman (and I mean that as high praise); he opened the concert, for instance, with a musical coup de théâtre only possible in the setting of an actual house of worship (here Harvard's handsome Memorial Church). Christophers had his sopranos begin the early plainsong Salve Regina from the atrium, so that to his audience, their floating vocal line seemed to be emanating from the walls of the nave; the effect was ethereal and haunting, like listening to an approach of angels. The piece also served, of course, as a grounding in the style which Victoria and Poulenc would develop to such heights. But while moments like these lingered in my memory as I left the concert, I also found myself wondering: what does it mean when "period" and "modern" composers seem to share so intimate a dialogue? In other words, at the end of Harry's vocal voyage, which "period" were we really in?

Richard Egarr and you-know-who.

Right now the Handel and Haydn Society is on something of a roll. Just a few weeks ago came the stunning Israel in Egypt, in which the chorus took command; but last weekend, it was the period orchestra's turn to amaze. Under the inspired direction of the brilliant Richard Egarr (above), they tore through a slate of masterpieces: the overture to Don Giovanni, Haydn's Symphony No. 101 ("The Clock") and Keyboard Concerto No. 11, and what may count as the most familiar piece of music in the Western canon: Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

First, the Fifth (even though it came last in the program).  You may think there's nothing new to be said about it - and actually, I couldn't claim Egarr delivered a profoundly new interpretation; as always, fate threw down its gauntlet at the opening, and it was taken up in triumph at the symphony's end (through its several ends, in fact). Still, the performance bore an intense personal stamp, and that makes all the difference, doesn't it. Egarr is known for both thoughtfulness and passion - he's fond of lightning shifts in dynamics, as well as calm, pondering reveries; and both were evident in his Beethoven. It was clear he'd thought a lot about the Fifth, and was eager to show us everything he'd learned. Thus though superbly sculpted, his interpretation still felt questioning, almost probing; everything felt deeply considered, and yet everything felt spontaneous.

And as Egarr seems to relate to his musicians as a musician himself (he's a superb keyboardist), he engenders a startling degree of camaraderie with them. (He also, perhaps not incidentally, has a curiously self-deprecating stage charisma.) Perhaps partly as a result of these factors, I don't think I've ever heard the orchestra sound as committed and unified as it did last weekend. New concertmaster Aisslin Nosky seemed to throw everything she had into every entrance, but this was only one facet of the players' palpable collective drive. I personally don't think the Fifth is Beethoven's greatest; it's harmonically simplistic (to be honest) and its great, animating idea - its incredible extrapolation of that fateful opening statement - I'm afraid has grown old for me. Still, when the Fifth builds as it did here, it's impossible not to be taken with it all over again.

Just as it was impossible not to be seduced by the rest of the program (indeed, I preferred the earlier pieces to the finale). Although I’m afraid that Egarr seemed to investigate the Overture to Don Giovanni without coming to any conclusions about it; his somewhat-light reading of it was never dull, certainly - there were eerie or mysterious touches here and there that you don’t often hear. Still, at times his fondness for abrupt swings in dynamic felt more like mannerism than manner.

But then came “The Clock,” perhaps Haydn’s most popular symphony (i.e., his answer to the Fifth), which features a famous second movement of almost hilarious domesticity, marked by a metronomic beat that gives the symphony its sobriquet. Here, unbelievably, Egarr insinuated beneath the tick-tock of that andante a kind of essay on the inexorable nature of time itself; as the movement rose to a climax, it was hard not to feel that a menacing gulf had opened up beneath the superficial gentility of Haydn's themes. But Egarr’s interpretation of the Concerto in D Major was even more startling. It’s the conductor’s belief that the concerto is a response to the meteoric rise of Mozart, and there’s certainly a Mozartean feel to its lyrical flights. But in the second movement, Un poco Adagio, Egarr seemed to push past Mozart to the Romantics (and even beyond). Considering that he was also playing the fortepiano part, the performance was all the more extraordinary – and daring.  For while in the Fifth, Egarr seemed determined to prove that period instruments could be as resoundingly affirmative as modern ones, here he seemed to be meeting head-on a related criticism: that they’re too soft for venues the size of Symphony Hall (I’ve muttered that sometimes myself). In his fortepiano playing, however, Egarr held the audience in the palm of his hand even as his playing slipped toward the gossamer – and then into a whisper, as the faintest mists of accompaniment rose from the strings. For most of the movement, it seemed that everyone in Symphony Hall was holding his or her breath. Rarely has a hush been quite so transporting.

Christophers and his chorus in previous action - photo by Stu Rosner.

I looked at my partner after the Handel and Haydn performance of Israel in Egypt last Sunday and simply said, "I think it's official." He nodded slightly.

"They're the best chorus in New England," we said together.

I know, the BSO's Tanglewood Festival Chorus is bigger - and given its size, admirably precise. The Boston Baroque chorale can be more personal and intimate. But for sheer eloquence and - how to put this - artistic firepower (?), I don't think the Handel and Haydn chorus has a peer these days.

The true begetters of this accolade are, of course, the singers themselves - pound for pound, these professionals are, I'd argue, the strongest group of vocalists in the region.  But of course their conductor, Harry Christophers, has had something to do with whipping them into such tip-top shape.  Way back in 2007, when I first heard Christophers (just before he was anointed Artistic Director of H&H), I was stunned by his facility with the chorale.  I continue to be stunned.  The man is a magician, that's all there is to it.

And Handel's little-heard oratorio Israel in Egypt gave him quite the stage on which to work his magic.  Christophers chose an early version of the 1738 composition (there are always various extant scores for Handel's oratorios, as he tweaked them over time), one that favored the choruses over the arias (you see Christophers knew both the work's central strength, and his secret weapon).  And then he went to work, drawing every shade of vocal color possible from Handel's palette.

It's quite a palette (in a way it's two palettes, as Handel often divides the chorus in two, like the Red Sea, and has it sing antiphonally with itself).  Other critics have cited the current political relevance of the piece; it was a political hot potato back in the day, too, for reasons of royal succession that are obscure now, just as the current parallels with Hosni Mubarak will be obscure in a few years' time.  Because amusingly enough, the oratorio itself isn't particularly political - unless you find the idea of freedom somehow controversial.  It is, instead, a gigantic tone poem, in which Handel's musical "image-painting" in Part II is perhaps the freest and most inventive of his entire career.

At times, I admit, the vocal metaphors here are nonetheless almost amusingly naïve - whenever God's angry, the chorus stomps around vocally, for instance.  But most of the time they are arrestingly imaginative.  When the flies descend on Egypt, the string section begins to sing like a cloud of insects, and when the fiery hail crashes down from the sky, an anarchic rumble of timpani and brass erupts (the orchestra was in fine form throughout, btw).  Most frightening is "He sent a thick darkness over all the land, a darkness that might be felt" an eerie dirge (of creepy modern tonality) that ended with a chilling emphasis on that last "darkness that might be felt."  In another mood entirely, "But as for his people, He led them forth like sheep" boasts one of Handel's sweetest melodies.  The introduction to the work is nearly as good as these pyrotechnics (even if it includes some themes "borrowed" by Handel, both from himself and other composers), and here the opening stanza of the piece, "The sons of Israel do mourn, and they are in bitterness" proved particularly haunting, as it was sung with a dazzling sense of emotional balance and precision.

Alas, Israel in Egypt peters out a bit - at least in imaginative terms - in Part III, perhaps because its text becomes repetitive and triumphalist (the Egyptians seem to die a thousand deaths in the crashing waves of the Red Sea).  And here the arias took over, which aren't quite as inspired as the choruses.  Christophers chose to assign these solos to members of the chorale (as is often done), which showcased some individual singers well, but pushed one or two vocalists into the limelight who, though blessed with gorgeous voices, didn't quite have the power to fill Symphony Hall.  Soprano Margot Rood and alto Emily Marvosh came off best - both brought a flexible technique and ripe color to their respective solos; there was also an impressive vocal wrestling match between basses Nicholas Nackley and Bradford Gleim, and a sparkling duet for H&H mainstays Brenna Wells and Teresa Wakim.  Elsewhere the singing was always adequate, but not quite transporting - until the chorus took over again, and Christophers and his vocal crew were once more in their element.

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.