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.

Messiah returns at Boston Baroque

Robinson Pyle sounds off on natural trumpet. Photo: Julian Bullitt.

One returns to the Boston Baroque version of Messiah as one returns to an old friend; you already know precisely the way it's going to delight you. (And, perhaps, the way it's going to get on your nerves.)  It has now been decades since artistic director Martin Pearlman pioneered the light, dancing tempi which made his intimately entertaining, essentially secular approach to Handel's masterpiece so revolutionary.  But now that his ideas have taken the whole period music movement by storm, his Messiah has, in a way, become a victim of its own success.  Other choruses have incorporated Pearlman's brilliant innovations, and extended them into larger statements while keeping his buoyant feel; so (as I've mentioned before) what once felt revolutionary now feels familiar.

This is the way of things, of course, and I'm happy to hear this wonderful oratorio again (and again and again) in any form.  As I've often said, Messiah is one of the great Western documents, like Hamlet, or the late quartets, or Starry Night at MOMA (which actually may be the perfect illustration for the adoration of the shepherds, if you ask me).  You return to it as a touchstone, to remind you what it means to be human.

So I think of the Boston Baroque Messiah as a touchstone, too.  Pearlman clearly hasn't changed his mind on any of the big issues (and neither have I); these days he concentrates on the details instead.  And he still understands the drama of Handel's instrumentation better than anyone; his Messiah is not only a dance, but an exquisite soundtrack.  Yes, Pearlman tends to take some things too fast, so the chorus's diction isn't always pinpoint, and vocal colors don't always ripen as they might.  But no one quite conjures the flutter of the angel's wings above the shepherds in Part I as he does - and he also succeeds in giving the latter half of Part II a sense of arc, and his lilting take on "The trumpet shall sound" remains sweetly glorious (thanks in no small part to the great Robinson Pyle on natural trumpet, at top).  To be honest, familiar as it is, Pearlman's Messiah is still often magical.

But alas, while I can usually praise his soloists as well his conducting, this year's model proved a mixed bag in that department.  The sunny soprano Mary Wilson, a beloved regular at Boston Baroque, for some reason wobbled early on in her upper register, and tenor John McVeigh, who proved a bit light for his role in general, aimed for a top note at one point and missed it entirely. Meanwhile alto Ann McMahon deployed a rich middle register and a memorable dignity (and she looked smashing), but her reserve seemed to hold her back from full emotional commitment, and she had to speak-sing the bottom notes of the role.

There were a few issues in the orchestra as well, at least on opening night.  When Pearlman took to the harpsichord, you sometimes could feel it in the coherence of the ensemble, and I couldn't help but notice that one of the violins slid slightly out of tune in Part II (a pitstop for re-tuning solved that, thank goodness).  The net effect of these small slips, any one of which was understandable, was that the performance often felt slightly out of focus.

The good news was that baritone Andrew Garland, who last impressed in Partenope, made an even bigger splash here, with a stern power and a sense of rhetorical drama that I personally feel is just right for Messiah (and which tipped the whole evening from the salon to the pulpit).  Pearlman has one of the most reliable eyes in the city for rising talent; here's hoping Mr. Garland remains a fixture in his vocal stable.

Certainly the fan base of this Messiah isn't going anywhere; Jordan Hall was packed for this performance, and the crowd roared its approval at the close.  And just btw, even though Messiah season is winding down, you can join these loyal admirers, and savor two of Mr. Pearlman's vocal favorites - local star David Kravitz and rising light  Courtney Huffman - at Boston Baroque's upcoming New Year's Day concerts, which if you don't know are among the most delightful classical events in the city; not only ravishing, but also often a hoot.  (These will sell out, though, so don't delay.)

Looking back at Euridice at Boston Baroque

Owen Willetts sings and suffers in Orfeo ed Euridice.

Over the past few years, Martin Pearlman's Boston Baroque has developed its own rather unique approach to baroque opera.  Usually working in the same constrained space (Jordan Hall) as the more historically-minded Boston Early Music Festival, Boston Baroque has pursued an intriguing amalgam of the modern and the period; generally this has meant modern costume and dance, coupled with "originalist" instruments and vocals.  This contrast might bother a purist, I suppose; but Pearlman has usually turned to choreographers, such as Marjorie Folkman (late of the Mark Morris Dance Group), with a natural sympathy for baroque style and form.

For Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, however, (which closed last weekend), Pearlman went instead with dancemaker Gianni Di Marco, whose work is less historically minded than Folkman's, but also larger in vision and (I'd argue) dramatically responsive, even inspired - it mapped beautifully to David Gateley's subtle stage direction, making this perhaps the most aesthetically coherent opera production I've yet seen from Pearlman's group.

This would have been good news enough, but the production had another secret weapon - the Boston (and, I think, American) debut of British countertenor Owen Willetts, who has been a big noise in Europe for some time, and practically shook the rafters at Jordan Hall with what amounted to a mezzo of stunning, indeed almost clarion, power.  At times you can feel that Willetts is turning inward to focus entirely on exactly how he's producing a voice this size - indeed, his thin frame seems to almost tense with every aria; but actually, this often helped with a dramatic performance that was appropriately intense and stricken, and you didn't mind the occasional "gap" in his acting because his vocals were so transfixing. Willett's voice doesn't boast just size, but also a rich, deep color that's rare in countertenors, and which as the grieving Orfeo he tinged with a melting poignancy.   Willetts is truly something to hear, and let's hope we hear him again soon.

His only real vocal competition (at least in terms of sheer force) was the chorus, actually  - which sang with beautiful focus and an eloquent attack, btw  (and was imaginatively blocked by director Gateley).  But for the record, local favorite Mary Wilson proved a luminous Euridice - whose second death was quite heartbreaking - and soprano Courtney Huffman made a delightfully nimble and boyish "Amor" (who in this version revives Euridice at the finale, just because otherwise the story is way too sad!).

For the opera buff, the production was intriguing in yet another way - Pearlman had returned to Gluck's original version, in Italian, which was stripped of much of the ballet music which encrusted it in its later, French incarnation.  The results were, indeed, pleasingly swift and dramatically focused - with my favorite sequence, the chorus's rebuke of Orfeo at the gates of Hell,  here a particular delight.  But there's still a lot of dance even in the original, so it was good to have Di Marco on board; his evocation of the Elysian Fields was especially lyrical and moving, and several scenes featured exceptional work from leading lady Ruth Bronwen Whitney.  Later, as Orfeo and Euridice creep up from Hades, Di Marco conjured an even more inspired pas de deux which developed cleverly from the requirement that the two lovers never meet each other's gaze; here the haunted, uncomprehending Whitney was sensitively supported by partner Henoch Spinola.

So - to recap: this production included some of the best singing and definitely the best dancing and staging we've yet seen at Boston Baroque; but how was the orchestra?  Pretty damn fine too - although the horns scraped alarmingly in the opening sections, they seemed to quickly right themselves, and the rest of the orchestra was transporting, particularly harpist Barbara Peschl-Edrich, who on a tricky period harp evoked Orfeo's lyre with an exquisite delicacy.  Altogether, this was quite the night to remember at Boston Baroque.  I'm not sure how they'll top it, but here's hoping they do.

Boston Baroque rings in the New Year

Photo by Kayan Szymczak for the Boston Globe.

I'm terribly late with this review, and I feel especially guilty because the concert in question was delightful, as Boston Baroque's annual double-gala on New Year's (both Day and Eve) always is. But then the intense crush in the lobby at Sanders Theatre last Monday was proof positive these folks don't need good reviews to get out the word about this tradition anymore, everyone knows it's the place to be for classical music fans on January 1.

Don't imagine, however, that just because a crowd is largely blue-haired that things can't get rough; honestly, I can remember crowds at the Rat back in the day that were more polite than the one that elbowed its way into Sanders Theatre that afternoon. Then again, folks knew the concert was being broadcast live on WCRB, so it had to begin on a dime (if you were listening, however, don't think that what you heard had the tenor of a tea party - well, maybe it did if you're thinking of the NEW tea party!).

At any rate, the WCRB recording didn't get much in the way of things musically, even if it did slightly muddle the usual intimate atmosphere that Boston Baroque conjures with its audience (at its New Year concerts in particular).  Emcee Cathy Fuller made a gently fulsome, if slightly blank, hostess, and Pearlman came off as slightly diffident in his radio patter, perhaps - but then he is a bit diffident, isn't he; indeed, as I listened to him I suddenly felt a strange sense of correspondence between his vocal presentation and the way he thinks musically.  Not a direct correspondence, actually - rather an inverted one; I wondered if Pearlman's swift, graceful tempi were actually the final goal of a careful consideration that can manifest itself in his speech as hesitancy.  But be that as it may, the broadcast in general felt like a sweet moment of triumph for this local light, who certainly deserves accolades for his dedication to Boston Baroque (and before that Banchetto Musicale, yes I'm that old) over the past decades.

After the introductions, the concert got off to a clean, rousing start with a gleaming rendition of a Corelli Concerto Grosso (Op. 6, No. 10), which might have almost stood as typification of Boston Baroque style: dancing, even sparkling, with some depth but not too much.  The ensemble here, and throughout the concert, was focused and responsive, even luminous; the players knew they were on the spot before perhaps their largest audience ever, and they gave it their best.

These New Year's Day concerts are always distinguished by little eccentricities, musical "features," and in-jokes, and this time around the crowd got a taste of two now-obscure instruments, the triple harp and sopranino recorder.  A triple harp deploys three sets of strings to cover the notes that in modern harps are handled by pedal-work - thus performing on it is a special technical challenge; but beyond that, like many period works, it has its own hauntingly delicate timbre: it seems to be literally speaking to us from several centuries ago.  Pearlman chose to showcase it with a great piece, Handel's Harp Concerto in B-flat (which more people know from its translation to the pipe organ).  Harpist Barbara Poeschl-Edrich played with clarity (no small feat!), and an exquisite sense of musical architecture, though perhaps a bit dryly, I thought (but then a truly singing line is the trick with this instrument).

Next came an even greater musical monument - Bach's famous Double Violin Concerto.  Here, perhaps, was where one could most argue with the brisk Boston Baroque manner - not because of its speed, I suppose (were violinists Christina Day Martinson and Julie Leven really that much faster than other performers I've heard?  I'm not sure) but rather for the fact that a certain expressiveness or lyricism seemed to be lost in the players' attack.  Again, you can argue about the level of lyricism appropriate to Bach - I just left wanting more, especially from the gorgeous Largo, and I know these ladies can supply it.

The program wrapped with two less rich, but still dazzling, offerings from Vivaldi.  The first, his Concerto in A minor for Sopranino Recorder, proved bewitching, and featured a diving, dazzling turn from virtuoso Aldo Abrau (who I swear must have an extra lung) on what Pearlman aptly called "the hummingbird of recorders."  Next came crowd favorite Mary Wilson, who wrapped her glowing soprano (if not her best diction) around Vivaldi's curious motet "Nulla in mundo pax sincera" ("In the world there is no genuine peace,") which disconcertingly delivers a melancholy lyric in an uplifting musical setting, and crowns it with truly sublime "Alleluia!"

There's always a little extra surprise at the end of these concerts, and this time it turned out to be a period-instrument rendering of "Glitter and Be Gay," from Bernstein's Candide, with Wilson beaming center stage as Cunegonde.  Maybe I'm just drunk on Candide these days, but I thought the instrumentation sounded fabulous (and Pearlman conducted with spirit), which made me think that an entirely-period-instrument version of the whole show could be quite intriguing (how about it, Mary Zimmerman?).  And Wilson had a fine time with the schizophrenic laughter-and-tears, sympathy-now-satire mode of the lyrics, and of course her voice has a richness you rarely hear on the musical-theatre stage.  It was a final triumphant touch to what was a truly gay and glittering soirée.

Secular Messiah

Boston Baroque in action.

Once, a generation ago, Martin Pearlman was regarded as an ionoclast, and his vision of Handel's Messiah - performed on period instruments, with light, agile forces, and to tempos derived from dance - seemed revolutionary; indeed, Pearlman was in the vanguard of those who "took back" Handel from a century or more of grandiose Victorian encrustation.

By now, however, his ideas have proven so persuasive, and been so widely adopted, that perhaps they themselves are looking a little dated.  Period instruments are everywhere, and a dancing lilt is practically the norm in baroque performance; "early music" is now in its mature phase, and re-considerations, further investigations, and even partial refutations of some of its founding principles have taken over the cutting edge of the scene.

Thus Harry Christophers has constantly experimented with the oratorio over at Handel and Haydn, sometimes achieving dazzling new effects; but meanwhile, at Boston Baroque, Pearlman has merely tinkered here and there - usually in attempts to bring this or that sequence into ever-closer (but always in the end hypothetical) alignment with period practice.  He simply seems to have remained largely satisfied with what to many is now the "standard" early music reading of Handel's masterpiece.

And after all, I suppose, if it ain't baroque, why fix it?  (Har-de-har.)  Still, as I've listened to the "Pearlman version" over the years, more and more questions about its principles and assumptions have gathered in my mind.  The conductor has always insisted, for instance, that Messiah is not really "sacred music" at all; he often repeats the point that Handel never played the score in a church - it was designed for theatrical performance, indeed its own librettist described it as "a fine Entertainment."  The Pearlman version is essentially an entirely secular Messiah.

And this case sounds awfully convincing, I admit, until you begin to sense that Pearlman is playing a bit of historical sleight-of-hand in his argument.  For to be blunt, it's hard to buy Messiah as an eighteenth-century Jesus Christ Superstar for the simple reason that it never pushes back on its central myth (much less attempts any of the sly satire that Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber got away with).  Indeed, Messiah never (ever) critiques or questions its title subject; instead it blatantly operates as a straightforward, if amazingly deep and brilliant, evocation of the central tenet of Christianity.  It is not merely an exquisite "drama," (as Pearlman would have it) just as the tale of Abraham and Isaac is not merely a punchy short story; it is essentially a religious, or at least metaphysical, idea made musical flesh.  The fact that it played in commercial theatres hardly demonstrates that it's inherently secular - on the contrary, it instead implies that Christianity still so pervaded the culture in Handel's day that sacred music could be seen as part of the hit parade.

This hardly invalidates all of Pearlman's premises; but these kinds of thoughts make you wish he could continue to investigate the piece musically, to take a break now and then from his dancing, dotted meters and see where the piece might take him.  He has already thoroughly re-thought its style; now, one wishes he would turn the same level of insight to its content, and how that might be better reflected in its form.  For Messiah is not merely a dance, or a fine entertainment, any more than King Lear is just a show.  There is a grandeur and mystery to it that's not at all related to Victorian pomposity, true - but merely dispensing with that pomposity doesn't necessarily conjure its full dimensions.

Still, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a pleasure to hear the Boston Baroque version every Christmas.  And last weekend, as ever, it was graceful, intimate and charming.  A bit rushed here and there (sometimes even in Christ's darkest hours).  But also often warm and luminous - and Boston Baroque does give Messiah a sense of dramatic arc that many other versions lack. "For unto us a child is born," for instance, remains almost a sprint in Part I, but Pearlman ties its dramatic thrust to the pieces that follow, so that we subconsciously perceive Handel's evocation of the Nativity as a single dramatic unit (ending with the famous encomium from Luke, "Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth, good will towards men").  Pearlman pulls off a similar, but even subtler, trick, at the end of Part II, where he persuasively links the cry of "Hallelujah!" to the rising militarist metaphors of the preceding airs and choruses.

And Pearlman generally chooses his soloists well - or at least they usually form a fairly coherent group in  terms of style.  Last weekend, the standout of Messiah line-up - really, the concert's secret weapon - was the great Ava Pine, who is a wonderful actress as well as a terrific soprano, and who sang with glorious authority, particularly during her airs in Part I.  Tenor Keith Jameson was also in splendid voice, and sang with radiant emotional transparency.  Meanwhile baritone Andrew Garland projected a stern, commanding tone that served him well when he was singing about raging, or shaking; but alas, the sense of spiritual transcendence that undergirds "The trumpet shall sound" - one of the great arias for baritone in the repertory - seemed to elude him.  And I'm afraid alto Julia Mintzer was even more variable, largely because a good portion of the role lay below her "break" (the point at which a singer generally shifts from "head" to "chest" voice).  Thus Ms. Mintzer was often clearly negotiating her performance technically, which pulled focus from the fact that her tone above her break was often complex and compelling.

Meanwhile the Boston Baroque orchestra, as always, played with verve and grace.  Alas, this year trumpeter Robinson Pyle didn't quite equal his brilliant playing of "The trumpet shall sound" from last season - condensation within the horn muddied a few notes in the latter half of the aria (as often happens with natural horns).  But the audience gave him an ovation anyway - everyone knows the piece is a killer.  And if the chorus couldn't quite give us pinpoint diction or a wide palette of color at the speeds Pearlman sometimes favored, still they sang quite cohesively, with both passion and pure tone.  Which reminded me that in a way, the thoughtful re-enactment of a musical tradition can be its own kind of Christmas present.

Nathaniel Watson, Amanda Forsythe, Daniel Auchincloss and Nathalie Paulin in Les Indes Galantes. (Photo: Julian Bullitt)

In a way it's hard to critique Rameau's Les Indes Galantes, because there's so little like it being performed today. What can you compare it to? It's classified as an "opera-ballet," but it's neither a cohesive 'opera' nor a 'ballet' (instead it's a set of thematically related romantic fables, alternating with dances that seem to float on the edge of audience participation). And the whole piece stops every now and then for a major special effect (like the volcano that erupts at the end of the second act - or pardon me, entrée). I think in the end Les Indes is best described as a kind of baroque variety show.

I don't mean that as a crack, btw. Much of the charm of the recent Boston Baroque production (and it was quite charming, trust me) was that you were never sure what might be coming next.  You did know that each scene was going to have a whimsical point to make about l'amour, but the settings of these musical valentines ranged from Persia to Peru, and were crammed with sultans, sun-gods, savages, and even transvestites; one minute, lovers were kissing before the lava reached the village; the next, they were trading suspiciously intoxicating "peace pipes."  Basically, there was something for everyone.

Luckily, every scene was likewise crammed with gorgeous music, too. Conductor Martin Pearlman has a special jones for the French baroque, and his case for a stripped-down version of Les Indes (the original was something of a spectacle) was that the music was spectacular all on its own, and he was proved quite right; particularly the first half of Rameau's score is wonderful - and so varied in its scene-painting that it shocked contemporary audiences. Plus it closes on a thrilling high note with that volcanic eruption (you don't normally link "French baroque" with "Krakatoa," but believe me, Rameau pulls it off). It's true that the work's second half is more variable in its inspiration, but still boasts ravishing moments, like the lovely quartet that pulls together the third entrée, and the elegant closing chaconne. One left the concert feeling that we really don't hear enough Rameau in this town.

The French genius was well-served by the period orchestra, whose playing was exquisite, and the chorus was in good voice, too - but the performance's chief jewel proved to be its soloists, who were all of outstanding quality. Local favorite Amanda Forsythe was most in period - the early eighteenth century - with her pearly, pure tone (her radiant comic acting was timeless, but that's another issue), while soprano Nathalie Paulin seemed to be replying to her from several decades later, but with a dusky richness so transporting that you didn't care. The men were just as strong, and likewise roughly in period - the powerful Sumner Thompson was probably the stand-out (in a passionate turn as a suicidal Incan that's probably the vocal highlight of the opera) but baritone Nathaniel Watson impressed with his eloquent lyricism too, and tenors Aaron Sheehan and Daniel Auchincloss more than held their own in their respective entrées. All in all, this was the most consistent set of soloists I've yet heard with Boston Baroque.

I wish I could give the same high marks to the accompanying dances, but these proved the production's sole weak point. Choreographed by the talented Marjorie Folkman - late of the Mark Morris Dance Group - they were much in her mentor's style, but exhibited little of his sense of musical structure and meaning, and so were lightly charming, but that's about it. Folkman was certainly constrained in terms of space, but you also felt an unnecessary constraint in her choreographic ambition; things got a bit more complex (and more genuinely lyrical) in the later entrées, but one still felt the dances weren't quite worthy of their accompaniment.

Meanwhile the clever direction by Sam Helfrich made witty use of what few (contemporary) props the staging could allow - and he even cheekily pulled the chorus into the action, too (they waved tiny national flags to introduce each change of locale, and even boogied a bit). In some ways Helfrich's ironic flair answered a question that's clearly on Pearlman's mind, i.e. how do you stage baroque works without turning them into museum pieces? Still, by the end of the evening some of the director's gambits had begun to seem superficial, and a few of his knowing jokes (like the predictable one about those "peace pipes") went on a bit too long; we began to perceive that something central to Rameau's vision - its truly wonder-struck exoticism - had somehow gone missing from the staging. This only argues, of course, for a fuller production from Pearlman at a later date. In the meantime we should be grateful for his tireless work in bringing this luminous score back into the repertoire.

Our local music scene is chock-a-block with worthy programs sporting titles like"Jewels and Discoveries" - and alas, usually a few of the gems in question turn out to be rhinestones.

So imagine my surprise when Boston Baroque's "Jewels and Discoveries" - which only saw two performances, last weekend - turned out to be solid Cartier from start to finish.  Conductor Martin Pearlman pulled together a program of brilliant obscurities, and his orchestra, chorus and soloists polished them to a dazzling sheen.  Tenor Keith Jameson was sidelined due to illness, but he was ably replaced (in Monteverdi's Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda) by the talented Aaron Sheehan, and everyone else seemed energized and more precisely on point than they've been in the recent past; or perhaps the difference was that conductor Pearlman, though he kept the pace sprightly (as always), only occasionally broke the usual baroque speed limits.  Whatever the reason, this was Boston Baroque at its finest - which is very, very good indeed.

Or perhaps the difference was simply that the program sparkled so consistently, and the singers and players themselves responded to that quality.  The concert opened with Dietrich Buxtehude's Heut’ triumphieret Gottes Sohn (Today God’s Son triumphs), an Easter cantata of surpassing grace and richness. An introductory sinfonia and fanfare led to a remarkably melodic chorale in which a series of soloists took pride of place - with particularly fine work coming from alto Martin Near and bass-baritone Ulysses Thomas. This was followed by two striking works of Monteverdi, Beatus Vir, a sublime setting of Psalm 112 which Pearlman gave his usual dancing buoyancy, and then what amounted to the centerpiece of the evening, Il combattimento Tancredi e Clorinda, a stunningly dramatic piece based on Torquato Tasso’s epic poem of the Crusades. In this Christianist potboiler, the hero Tancredi challenges a Saracen knight to battle at the gates of Jerusalem, not guessing that "he" is really a "she" (Clorinda, in fact, the woman he loves, surprise surprise!). Can you guess the rest? Probably - although I'm afraid these days we have to wince a bit at the final twist, in which the dying Clorinda, a Muslim, begs her beloved (and unwitting killer) to baptize her. Yuck.

Still, even this questionable bit of Christian triumphalism (Monteverdi was a priest, remember) is rendered with sublime delicacy (indeed, poor Clorinda's death is almost overwhelmingly poignant) and the rest of Tancredi e Clorinda is simply terrific. Monteverdi literally invented the tremolo for the piece (that's right, before Tancredi e Clorinda nobody had ever heard a tremolo), explicitly demanded very precise pizzicatos to convey the thwacks of the lovers' swords, and in general called for a wild dynamic that in its day was thought crazy. And to be honest, battle music really hasn't gotten that much better over the past four centuries - Tancredi e Clorinda still thrills, and the narration is a hoot, with the lovers' vows framed by "he said" and "she said" from the narrator, as if we were simultaneously listening to an opera and watching a silent movie. Both Tancredi and Clorinda were ably embodied by bass Bradford Gleim and soprano Mary Wilson, and Aaron Sheehan, though stepping in at the last moment, made quite the dashing narrator.  (He had to dash, as this was the one time in the program Pearlman's tempo approached a gallop.)

The second half of the concert, though still remarkable, never reached quite the same musical and dramatic peaks.  It opened with sacred music by Heinrich Biber, mixed with two of the same composer's Mystery Sonatas, violin pieces devised to convey the 15 mysteries of the rosary.  The psalm settings and the Agnus Dei Pearlman had selected were lovely (and gave soprano Teresa Wakim,  alto Thea Lobo and tenor Murray Kidd a chance to shine), but it was the sonatas that threw off a strangely  memorable fire.  Each of the 15 is tuned - or "distuned" - in a particular way (which is too complicated to go into here), which gives the instrument an eccentric timbre, and gives the violinist a headache, probably (because of the unusual tuning of the instrument, each piece has its own bizarre key signature, too).  Add to that the fact that both of the sonatas on the program ("The Crucifixion" and "Assumption of the Virgin") seemed fiendishly difficult, and you can imagine the challenge facing concertmaster Christina Day Martinson.  She seemed unfazed by all this, however (but then she never seems fazed), and, working with two separate violins, carried off the sonatas with spirited verve (indeed, the final gigue from the "Assumption" was almost dizzying).

The crowning glory of the program was literally a discovery - an early Gloria by Handel that was only authenticated a few years ago.  To be honest, though very beautiful, the piece almost felt like a bit of an anti-climax after the impressively knotty Mystery Sonatas  - luckily, however, Mary Wilson returned to carry it off. Ms. Wilson's voice is just about perfect for Handel - her tone is ripe with sun, and her phrasings so flexible they seem to almost ripple. By the end of her beguiling performance, any and all sense of anticlimax had been banished.

Martin Pearlman conducts Boston Baroque.

I try to hear both major local versions of Messiah every year, and there was one moment from this year's Boston Baroque edition that I will never forget - the duet for bass and natural trumpet in the third part. The piece begins, "The trumpet shall sound," but in the hands of trumpeter Robinson Pyle, the instrument actually sang, in tandem with Kevin Deas, the wonderfully rich bass who was essaying a famous passage from Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians (the one establishing the doctrine of Christian resurrection). It's one of the loveliest melodies in all of Handel (and that's saying something), and Deas and Pyle had clearly worked together so that Pyle could closely follow the bass's ornamentation of the beautiful line, "We shall be changed." It was probably the best playing on natural trumpet I've ever heard in my life, as well as one of the most moving duets between a singer and an instrumentalist I've been lucky enough to witness. When Deas recognized Pyle at the close of the aria, it all but brought down the house.

Well, that was quite the high point - if only the rest of the performance had been so elevated! Not that Boston Baroque's version of this classic wasn't a lovely evening of music; it was. But it's beginning to feel a bit rigid in its eccentricity, and a bit unfocused in its attack. Ironically enough, the ensemble's conductor, Martin Pearlman, was among the first instigators of the revolution in Messiah performance that swept concert halls two decades ago.  Pearlman's idea was to bring the rhythms of dance to the musical drama, and to scale what had become a rigidly grand Victorian epic down to a nimbler, more intimate, and perhaps more human, experience.

In my opinion, this was all to the good - and today the stentorian Messiah that Pearlman was reacting against has pretty much become a thing of the past.  But I'm afraid over the years the conductor has become a bit rigid himself about a few things - he always favored brisk rhythms, for instance, but by now several pieces of his Messiah have gotten so fast that they aren't just dances but jigs (and they seem to shed more and more color and detail the quicker he takes them).  Plus Pearlman organizes his chorus into quartets, rather than in blocks (with all the sopranos together, then all the altos, etc.), which I imagine he thinks gives their sound a kind of blended transparency - which it does, up to a point.  But it also makes it harder for the singers to synch up the vocal melisma that is the backbone of many of Handel's melodies, and thus things sometimes turn blurry (particularly at the clips Pearlman often prefers).  Indeed, sometimes one distinctly felt in Pearlman's Messiah that he was putting the chorus at a disadvantage.  But I began to realize as I listened this year that a key difference between the Pearlman version and the Christophers version (over at  Handel and Haydn) is that Christophers, once a professional singer, views his orchestra as an extension of his chorus, while Pearlman, a keyboardist,  unconsciously sees his chorus as an extension of his orchestra - and why shouldn't they therefore just be able to sing as fast as he wants them to?

Oh, well - it's true not everything was too fast; Pearlman didn't dash through "He was despised and rejected of men," for instance.  Much of the performance was at an appropriately thoughtful pace.  And Boston Baroque had clearly corrected a problem they've had in the past: when Pearlman conducted from the harpsichord, the ensemble didn't begin to fray as it was once wont to do.  Still, the Boston Baroque orchestra isn't playing as cleanly as they might (though they now have that dancing lilt down pat).  And I was disappointed here and there with the soloists, even though I admire them all from previous hearings.  The luminous Amanda Forsythe had her usual pearly tone, but she didn't quite have the power, at least on Saturday night, that she has possessed in the past.  And counter tenor Matthew White, though he has a haunting timbre that's just right for many passages in Messiah, also scrapes a bit at the bottom of the role (which edges into contralto territory), and something about his voice didn't mix well with the tenor's in their duet.  Meanwhile said tenor, Keith Jameson, had some wonderful moments but also some tentative ones; the only member of the quartet, in fact, who sang with consistent authority was bass Deas, who outdid himself in that final duet.  It was a ringing reminder of the magic that Pearlman and company can still wreak with this immortal masterpiece.

The rose window at St. John the Divine in New York.

One of the great achievements of the early music movement - and Martin Pearlman's Boston Baroque in particular - has been its reclamation of Monteverdi from his lapsarian status as "that Italian guy before Bach." Last weekend's performances of the great composer's Vespers of 1610 only cemented that achievement. Monteverdi should have always been set somewhere on the boundary of Big Three territory, in that he brought pre-baroque forms such as the madrigal to the highest pitch they ever reached. But as early music pioneers have made us more and more familiar with his masterpieces, his status as a forger of new musical form has begun to seem to rival Beethoven's and Wagner's. Monteverdi of course all but invented opera, but nearly as original is his Vespers, a work unprecedented (at the time) in its scope and ambition, and one that all but defies categorization even today.

Of course on the surface, Monteverdi pretty much follows the normal structure of the Catholic rite of vespers, the evening ritual in which a series of sung psalms and antiphons leads to a Magnificat, a canticle dedicated to both the glory and humility of the Virgin Mary. In fact the Vespers was written, many believe, as a kind of audition for the top musical post at St. Mark's cathedral in Venice (Monteverdi got the job).

But it's hard to look at this piece as a résumé-builder, even for a genius; instead it sometimes feels like a kind of musical big bang, a technical, stylistic, and metaphorical explosion that in a way kick-started everything. Monteverdi leaps from motet to sonata to psalm and back again, all while somehow maintaining a sense of unity; he splits and re-forms his choir at will, and sometimes provides them with up to 10 separate vocal parts, all operating in synchrony(the piece also calls for seven soloists). What's more, Vespers is set all over the performance space, be it cathedral, chapel or concert hall - sometimes we can't even see the singers, as they're intended as voices of the cosmos, responding re-assuringly to the profession of human faith.

Now I don't believe in God, but Monteverdi certainly did (he eventually became a priest), and frankly, sometimes he almost convinces me of His existence. There are few more haunting moments in all of Western music, for instance, than "Duo seraphim," his duet for two angels floating in space, singing the glory of the Almighty (they're eventually joined by a third, who fuses with them into a single note when they praise the Trinity). Here conductor Martin Pearlman placed his tenors, Derek Chester and Aaron Sheehan, in the balconies of Jordan Hall, to thrillingly plaintive effect, and Monteverdi's evocation of the mystery of God's presence gripped us not only as great music but also as great theatre (and maybe even great architecture).

Alas, not all the soloists fared as well from the stage itself. Mr. Pearlman had clearly instructed his singers to strip their styles down toward pure-tone singing, and so I missed some of the vocal richness I expected from Mary Wilson and Kristen Watson, who both shone to better advantage in operatic roles with Boston Baroque earlier this year; indeed, of Pearlman's soloists (almost all of them familiar from earlier programs) I felt only baritone Donald Wilkinson was operating at his best. And the wind section, though fine in unison, sometimes got a little ragged when each instrument was exposed for long stretches. Likewise the height of Monteverdi's polyphony - those 10-part-plus sequences - didn't always feel entirely coherent.

But this is, admittedly, an incredible challenge, and any roughness here may have been partly due to understandable opening-night coordination issues; at any rate the chorus generally sounded superb, and nowhere more beautiful than in Monteverdi's concluding Magnificat, one of the most touching ever written. And Pearlman's mastery of the total arc of the Vespers was always and everywhere evident. The piece calls for a high degree of editorial intervention; much of the instrumentation is suggested but not pinned down, the position of some motets is disputed, and precisely which antiphons should be included is never specified (Pearlman took his from the Feast of the Assumption, certainly an appropriate choice). It's no secret that Pearlman's decisions on these and other key points have led to a version that many consider "the" Vespers of our time (it's already won a Grammy). Certainly the "Pearlman version" limns every - sometimes contradictory - facet of the piece: its intimacy and its grandeur, its period "feel" and yet its strange sense of timelessness. His exploitation of every nook and cranny of Jordan Hall was also brilliant, and only makes me long to hear this version in New York on March 6, when Boston Baroque will bring the Vespers to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, surely a close-to-ideal venue for hearing Monteverdi's music of the spheres.

Boston Baroque conquers Gaula

Ava Pine schemes in Amadigi di Gaula (photo by Julian Bullitt).

Here days have passed and I still haven't written at length about Boston Baroque's Amadigi di Gaula. Which doesn't mean I wasn't crazy about it; indeed, I felt that along with BLO's Don Giovanni and BEMF's L'incoronazione di Poppea, Amadigi represented the year's best in local opera performance. Some of my enthusiasm, perhaps, came from that happy surprise that ensues when an unknown work proves remarkable. And trust me, Amadigi is studded with wonderful arias, and adventurous orchestration, too (along with such a rarity for Handel as two separate duets). Why it has fallen from the repertory is indeed a mystery (this was probably the piece's Boston premiere). It's true the libretto is a little more repetitive than most - it's essentially one variation after another on a single romantic triangle. But, uh, how to put this - does anyone go to Handel for the libretti? Anyone? Anyone? Alrighty then.

At any rate, the weakness of the Amadigi libretto was outweighed by the surprising strength of the acting at Boston Baroque. Indeed, it's rare that any opera (particularly a semi-staged one) is as dramatically striking as it is musically satisfying, but this was definitely the case here. To tell true, I wasn't wild about Leah Wool's acting of the title role (though male, Amadigi's arias are written for a mezzo - just about the whole opera is for treble voices), mostly because Wool at first seemed more bluff than dashing. But once she reached the arms of her beloved, Oriana (Mary Wilson), Wool melted convincingly - but then who wouldn't, as Wilson had both a gloriously rich soprano and a warm-yet-principled presence at her command.

Their love was complicated, of course, by two unwanted pursuers: the witch Melissa (Ava Pine), vindictively obsessed with Amadigi, and the prince Dardano (countertenor Matthew White), burdened with a sad jones for Oriana. White brought an intriguingly plaintive timbre to his arias, and was dramatically compelling throughout; but it was Pine who all but lit up the stage. Dressed in a skin-tight black sheath that might have come off a serpent, her Melissa was a broken-hearted stalker with whose obvious pain we could sympathize, and Pine pulled off one acting coup after another while unleashing a soprano of admirable force and intense color; this was easily one of the strongest operatic performances of the Boston year.

Praise must also go to director Paul Peers, who devised a series of compelling abstract scenarios on the empty concert stage (and sometimes on the balcony), and of course conductor Martin Pearlman, who kept up the pace while drawing sensitive playing from his ensemble. All in all, this was a night both to savor and remember.