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.)

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.

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.

Messiah at Handel and Haydn Society

Jesse Levine plays like an angel.  Photo(s): Kyle T. Hemingway.

One of the sillier aspects of our age is the proliferation of pseudo-"rebellions" in the performing arts. As the populace behaves more and more like sheep in the political sphere, ironically enough, they seem to be aping revolutionaries at the theatre.  Sometimes I think there ought to be a word for this phenomenon (I nominate "fauxbellion") - or at least for its more irritating forms, like the new-fangled tendency not to stand during the "Hallelujah Chorus"of Handel's Messiah.  People who yawned at the invasion of Iraq seem, oddly enough, to take this issue close to heart.  Apparently they imagine being couch potatoes throughout the rousing climax to this fantastic oratorio counts as some sort of statement.

But to be blunt, you should stand during the "Hallelujah Chorus."  Not for George II, of course (who, legend has it, began the tradition, perhaps without realizing it).  And not for the Baby Jesus, either - at least not necessarily.

You should stand for Handel.  For artistic greatness.  For recognized artistic greatness, which it doesn't hurt to re-recognize once a year.

And you should stand for the Handel and Haydn Society chorus and orchestra, too, at least when they're in as fine a form as they were last weekend.  Artistic director Harry Christophers once more worked a kind of miracle with their combined forces, conjuring from many of the choruses huge, exquisitely balanced musical experiences that seemed to expand before your eyes like fields of stars.  This year's "For to us a Child is born," for example, was hands-down the greatest performance of this chestnut I've ever heard, ever (even from H&H), and hot on its heels were powerful renderings of the fugue "He trusted in God that He would deliver Him," and, of course, that famous chorus discussed at top.

Meanwhile the orchestra was (mostly) in just as splendid shape - new concert mistress Aisslin Nosky was missing (due to commitments entered into prior to signing with H&H), but the strings sounded just as transparent and robust as they had at their last outing, and on their first appearance (as the trumpets of the angels, up in the balconies of Symphony Hall, at top), the horns sounded wonderful, too - alas, later on, in the most exposed playing of the oratorio ("The trumpet shall sound") things got wobbly - which is always a risk when you're playing a "natural" horn (that is, one with no valves).

As for the soloists - well, as has sometimes happened before, they were a slight puzzlement.  Fine singers all, but rather a motley crew; I still don't understand what Christophers is going for in his line-ups for Messiah.  This time we got a bel canto soprano, the elegant Sarah Coburn, with a glowing bloom at the top of her range; but she didn't have the crispest diction when set against the pinpoint enunciations of the chorus (from her bio, it's clear she's used to singing in Italian).  And Coburn was paired with a countertenor, Lawrence Zazzo - who had an intriguing timbre and sang with mournful fire, but who, like most countertenors, scraped a bit on the low notes of the role.  Meanwhile Tom Randle, who is familiar from many previous H&H outings, seemed to take his time warming up - although his initial diffidence did give way to more assured power as the evening wore on.  Baritone Tyler Duncan, by way of contrast, was powerful from the start, and also boasted an intriguingly complex timbre - but he, too, dicted a bit slackly, mostly because he tended to drop away at the ends of his lines.

To be fair - all had fine moments, and all are interesting singers; it was just hard to see how they fit together as a set, as a statement.  That question only exists, though, because by now the orchestra and chorus have become so cohesive.  So someday, I'm sure (perhaps after years of tinkering), Christophers will find a dream quartet to match the accompanying musical forces he has tuned so finely.

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.

Photo(s) above by Kyle T. Hemingway.

It was Messiah time again at Handel and Haydn last weekend - only in the hands of Harry Christophers (below), it's never quite the same Messiah from one year to the next. Christophers seems to be by nature a tinkerer, and of course he began his career as a professional singer, and Messiah doesn't really have a single definitive text . . . so you do the math. To my mind this variety is all to the good, actually - it keeps the tradition fresh, and at any rate Christophers generally colors within a loose set of lines (his is the Anglican, rhetorical Messiah; Martin Pearlman's, which you can hear this coming weekend, is the Continental, intimate one). I may not always agree with Christophers' tweaks from year to year, but at least they're always interesting. Last time around, I think we got a countertenor rather than an alto; this year we got a real alto, but we didn't get a bass - I know it said "bass" in the program, but singer Sumner Thompson is really more of a baritone (he sang compellingly, he's just a baritone). For the record, I liked the baritone bass more than I liked the countertenor alto, but I still think I like best a good old-fashioned soprano, alto, tenor and bass. That's just how I roll.

At any rate, the reason everyone goes to hear Handel and Haydn is the chorus, not the soloists, and this year they were as terrific as ever. And their integration with the H&H period orchestra continues apace. You can see Christophers singing the entire work to himself as he conducts, and breathing it, too, and that body knowledge inflects everything he does - the orchestra sometimes seems just an extension of the chorus, just another set of voices in far-flung, superhuman timbres. And sometimes in the call-and-response between the two groups there's a curious little lull - a small sonic space - in which I'd swear Christophers is unconsciously allowing the orchestra to breathe, too.

The soloists did hold their own against this virtuosic display, glorious as it was. Thompson sang with intensity, and tenor Allan Clayton intermittently revealed clarion power. Alto Catherine Wyn-Rogers seemed the least interesting of the quartet at first, but slowly warmed up; Christophers took "He was despised and rejected of men" at a very meditative pace indeed, but this brought out her most complex colors. Soprano Sophie Bevan was perhaps the stand-out of the group. Dressed with a décolletage more plunging than the Virgin Mary might have approved, Bevan didn't really have to depend on that to hold our interest; she has a lovely, if somewhat trembling, voice, and her rendition of "I know my Redeemer liveth" was one of the radiant high points of the evening.

But then Messiah is always crammed with high points - which is one reason I never tire of it; it's one of the great human documents, like the Ninth and King Lear or Rembrandt's "Prodigal Son." Every year I thrill to hear the revelation of the angels to the shepherds, and "For unto us a Child is born," and the trumpets calling to each other from the balconies, and even the single, unbelievably moving line, "Behold, I tell you a mystery." All of these seemed as magical as ever last weekend, perhaps because Christophers seemed to be speeding up and slowing down at will, the better to contemplate each moment individually. He saved the best for last: the final, luminous "Amen" was more moving than I've ever heard it, building from a lush, but hushed, hymn to a riveting affirmation. All I can say is, Boston Baroque has their work cut out for them!

Rebel without a chorus

If there's one critical cliché we could use less of around here it's the cliché of "rebellion." To be blunt, the "rebel" has become the bobo equivalent of the Victorian virgin: an ideal that everyone pretends to espouse but nobody actually lives up to. And as such, it's just tedious, and gums up the works of any kind of intelligent dialogue about the arts.

So let's be honest, for once, shall we, and admit that our local print readers are not "rebels"? Not the Globe or Phoenix readers, much less the Herald or Metro readers (obviously). These people don't "dissent," they don't "subvert," they don't do anything but consume. What they consume, or course, are niche cultural products designed to simulate rebellion. Which is hardly the same thing.

But what prompts this latest rant, Mr. Hub Review, you may ask? In a word, the combined forces of Matthew Guerrieri and Sebastian Smee in the Globe this weekend - although frankly, my irritation with this moribund meme has been rising for months, if not years. Both reviewers have a penchant for claiming consumer choices are rebellious - indeed, one often senses that their "arguments," such as they are, inevitably edge toward that final evaluation: is the work at hand "subversive," or not? If yes - the work is good; if no - well, what would Elvis and James Dean say?

Of course I don't think Elvis or James Dean would have much to say about the "Hallelujah" chorus, in any case - still, Guerrieri, in a lengthy piece in Saturday's Globe, decides that the current vogue among "secular" fans of Handel's Messiah to no longer stand during its climactic chorus "ranks as one of the more effortless demonstrations of anti-authoritarian dissent."

But can anti-authoritarian dissent ever be "effortless"? I'd argue no. If you have expended no effort, you have not dissented. You have merely pretended you have dissented. The choice of what music you download for free does not qualify as an act of dissent. The fact that you have holes in your jeans torn by Marc Jacobs does not mark you as a rebel. And sitting through the "Hallelujah" chorus does not make you James Dean.

What it makes you instead is a certain kind of consumer, grazing the culture and filtering every experience through a self-conscious (and self-satisfied) cocoon. You may dislike the "monarchical overtones" of Messiah (as Guerrieri puts it - and he certainly digs up a lot of info about whether or not George II stood up, and why), but you're quite comfortable with the new spirit of the beehive - that pleasing buzz of "critical thinking" and liberal-tarianism that seems to have somehow outlasted the Clinton administration. Because oddly, while he's long-winded on Hanoverian politics, Guerrieri is all but silent about our own. Because, well - that would be rebellious, wouldn't it.

There is a whiff of politics in Guerrieri's essay, I suppose, in that the "Hallelujah" spoilers insist on framing Messiah as secular music (even though when they say "secular" they really mean "academic"). That's right - a secular piece about the central theological concept of Christianity. Uh-huh. The standard dodge of this obvious self-contradiction is the argument that Handel wrote his oratorio for commercial consumption, and never performed it in a church (indeed, its length and structure make it unsuitable for actual religious service). But does venue determine content? I think not - all this proves is that in the eighteenth century, explicitly sacred music had a commercial public. For to be blunt, Messiah is not like such oratorios as Saul, which are drawn from religious texts but are essentially dramatic in form and content; it is, instead, openly theological - an explication, in fact, of Christian theology.

So to my mind, the secularists have some 'splainin' to do. They like to pretend that Messiah is merely a set of pretty songs, or dances - "an entertainment," as one local presenter would have it. But just try to convince yourself of that as Handel digs further and further into the human issues of death, and hope, and love and guilt and redemption that underpin the story of Christ; in many ways, Messiah is deeper than the religion it celebrates. That's why I'm happy to stand for its chorus, even though I wouldn't stand for our evil-gay pope, or the Southern Baptist Convention, or the Windsors (or, frankly, the Israel lobby). To me, Messiah operates above and beyond all that. Some old British queen you've never heard of once said, "Only connect" - and rising during Messiah is one small way to connect. Only it doesn't mean you're connecting with your inner monarchist, or Christianist, any more than lighting a menorah means you support the Orthodox subjugation of women. It is, instead, a statement that traditions can be transformed over time, perhaps even into something that more accurately maps to a work's original vision. (For Messiah isn't so much secular as it is multi-cultural: it's a gay German's commercial vision of an Episcopalian mystery.)

So yes, Virginia, you should stand for the "Hallelujah" chorus - not for George II, of course, but for Handel, and the performers, and for the joy of the work itself - a work that in its depth and glory is one of those "outliers" that Malcolm Gladwell (you like him, right?) is always talking about. But hey, why stop with the Messiah? Feel free to stand up for Beethoven's Ninth, and Don Giovanni, and the last scenes of King Lear and The Cherry Orchard, too. Stand up early. Stand up often. To quote Michael Stipe, now stand.

(Still to come: the rebel cliché, Sebastian Smee, and Marcel Duchamp.)

Last weekend's performances of Messiah marked the advent of Harry Christophers (above), the new Artistic Director of the Handel and Haydn Society, who's been waiting in the wings for the past few months as other conductors took the podium. For me, however, this Messiah was also something like Christophers's second coming - the first time I heard his work was in the same oratorio two years ago, which I knew immediately was among the best versions I'd ever heard, or would ever hear. I was naturally wondering whether now, ensconced at H&H, he would be able to conjure something like the same miracle, and I'm happy to report he very nearly did, at least insofar as the chorus and period orchestra were concerned.

Alas, the soloists in this year's model, though often wonderful, weren't quite in the same class as the H&H core, so the whole package wasn't tied up with a bow as one might like. But it was still thrilling, and, as the cliché goes, deeply moving (as Messiah should be). And I wasn't the only one who thought so; the few seconds just before the "Hallelujah" chorus is always a clinch moment in Messiah performances - will the audience stand, as tradition dictates (because George II once did), or will it hang back, refuse to participate, and remain cocooned in postmodern distance? You can say it's not a judgment on the performance to remain seated, but it sure feels like one, and there's nothing more awkward than having a few people stand and then think better of it when the rest of the house refuses to rise.

In the Christophers version, however, it was all but impossible to remain seated, at least for those who knew the tradition (and the musical virgins who didn't soon got the idea). But what impelled the two thousand or so in Symphony Hall to rise to their feet? It didn't feel like some hidebound ritual - nor did it feel like the usual 'standing O," which often reflects the audience's feelings about itself rather than the performers (and we weren't clapping, anyhow). To me it seemed like a moment of genuine tribute - to Handel, of course, whose genius brought to such deep and luminous musical fruition the joyous mystery of redemption, but also to Christophers and the assembled forces of H&H, who brought that vision to life with such vibrant clarity. It felt, to be honest, something like an act of solidarity; we understood, and so stood not only in praise but in thanks.

But back to what I didn't like. Mr. Christophers had chosen a countertenor, Daniel Taylor, for the alto parts in the oratorio - a decision much in keeping with current early music practice, and which added a certain spiritual and political dimension to the work itself. One of the things I like about the early music movement is in that in its ranks (unlike the ranks of our local major symphony), being gay is no big deal - and since the sacred music tradition is largely being kept alive by gay people (in sad counterpoint to the bigotry of the institution said music was written for), and since Handel was probably gay, too (and maybe even Jesus was), it's entirely appropriate for issues of gender and identity to echo through a secular rendition of Messiah. Now I've no knowledge of Mr. Taylor's sexual preference, but he had an air of diffident tragedy about him, and I think the gay men and women in the audience (like me) heard a layered sense of poignance in his haunting version of "He was despised and rejected of men."

Still, sometimes Mama just wants a big fat alto, and I have to admit the closeness of Mr. Taylor's tone (lovely as it was) to that of soprano Suzie LeBlanc meant the full breadth of timbre we expect of Messiah was missing from the ensemble singing. Ms. LeBlanc had a transparently pure top, but not quite enough power further down (Mr. Daniels had the same problem, and even fell into his chest voice on his bottom note). And though her diction was excellent, Ms. LeBlanc didn't seem to believe in what she was singing, which is crucial to Messiah - you can't fudge it with the usual operatic emoting. Tenor Tom Randle and especially bass-baritone Matthew Brook were more genuine, and thus more moving; they were here to witness, not emote. True, Randle can be a bit self-dramatizing, and Brook's lower end turned a bit muddy, but I won't soon forget Randle's "Thy rebuke hath broken his heart," or Brook's "We shall all be chang'd."

As for the chorus - it's never sounded better, and that's saying something. Christophers seems to have a special magic with chorales - diction, musicality, variety, he gets it all, and this time the singing was beautifully integrated with the dynamics of the orchestral playing (rather than just "sitting on top of it," as sometimes happens). Some might argue a few of Christophers's decisions were eccentric, and he makes no bones about the fact that he works up his own "edition" of Messiah every year (just as Handel did, btw). But in my book, Christophers gets so much right that's it silly to quibble over details, and at any rate, many of his unusual tweaks proved fascinating in their own right (and he certainly fielded nothing as bizarre as last year's whispered "Hallelujah" chorus). I couldn't help but join in the roars of approval that met the chorus and orchestra on the finale, which also read as a general affirmation of how lucky we are to have Mr. Christophers leading Handel and Haydn.

Messiah complex

H&H Concertmaster Daniel Stepner.

There's at least one Christmas tradition that isn't really a tradition any more - in the last few years, Messiah has morphed from the equivalent of checking off a box on the Christmas list to something like an ongoing aesthetic argument. First came the early music revisionists (led by Boston's own Martin Pearlman), who pulled the work back from the nineteenth to the eighteenth century (where it basically belongs). Then last year Harry Christophers, Handel and Haydn's new artistic director, offered a striking amalgam of the lighter "new" Messiah manner and its "older" Victorian proclamative power. And now this year's model from H&H, driven by yet another innovative British conductor, Paul Daniel, unveiled another vision altogether: Messiah as personal musical statement.

The results were by turns fascinating and moving, but also somewhat eccentric, and sometimes even slightly irritating. Daniel's reading was nothing if not fresh, and his players and singers responded to every surprising decision with excitement and passion - and this kind of intellectual commitment to musical exploration is, I admit, what impresses me most about this group; they'll follow their conductor anywhere, even when he decides to open the "Hallelujah Chorus" at something close to a whisper.

But I confess I wasn't ready to follow Mr. Daniel (at left) quite that far, and sometimes it struck me that he was looking at Messiah as a kind of academic experiment, or even personal musical toy. Perhaps this is due to the fact that I'm just a cultural stick-in-the-mud - but it might also be due to the fact that I know when a piece has been almost over-considered. In a word, this was a Messiah that rarely let rip, and as a result some of its glories - in particular its joy and power - had gone missing. The conductor also willfully subsumed the dramatic text into the musical one - he was only too happy to push diction into a blur if he wanted to step on the musical gas, and even the final, gorgeous "Amen" was de-constructed into a set of disconnected notes; it was a lovely, intriguing musical phrase that recalled the moment's medieval sources, but it was not the word "Amen." I also noticed a certain repetition in Daniel's originality - he liked tender beginnings that rushed into slightly-melodramatic climaxes; certainly a time-honored technique, but by the third or fourth time around, one that had begun to sound a little corny. In the end, this conductor's Messiah was as much a tour of his own musical world as a thoughtful re-imagining of a tradition.

But hell, it's Christmas - and Daniel certainly bore many lovely musical gifts. The highlights of his Messiah were the gentle and melancholy moments that many other versions overlook: from the opening "Comfort ye" to "Behold the Lamb of God" to "I know that my Redeemer liveth," this was a Messiah of hope and solace rather than confident affirmation. Sometimes the piece was even heartbreaking - the "We shall be chang'd" segment was particularly piercing, via a beautifully dramatic reading by bass Brett Polegato. Handel and Haydn hasn't seen Mr. Polegato since 1999 - too long a break, if you ask me.

As for the rest of the soloists, however, I'd have to say "meh." No one else had Polegato's power (this was perhaps by design); at least mezzo Paula Murrihy projected a sense of profound personal feeling in "He was despised." But alas, soprano Kendra Colton and tenor Brian Stucki only managed the usual generic "heart." The chorus was nimble and attentive to Daniel's every whim - you could almost see them calculating exactly how loud he wanted them to be. But they sounded a little thin as both the jubilant congregation of "For unto us a Child is born" and the snarling mob of "Let Him deliver Him, if he delight in Him." The orchestra was the conductor's real musical focus, and I have to give Daniel props for the most cleanly delineated musical layering I've heard yet from H&H - in this department, he rivals James Levine. Daniel drew particularly fine work from the timpani, and of course the reliable Jesse Levine, H&H's secret weapon on natural horn.

And in the end, I have to admit it takes guts to simply ignore the presumptions of a tradition and follow your own road, which is precisely what Mr. Daniel has done. Oddly enough, despite the many caveats of this review, I'd be eager to hear him again, although maybe not in the saddle of this particular warhorse. I guess I just like my hallelujahs to sound like "Hallelujah!"

Jesus Christ, it's a Messiah face-off!

Handel's Messiah is, of course, the greatest piece of gay church music extant (and one of the greatest pieces of music extant, period). These days, however, it's been drawn into another culture war: scholar Michael Marissen has argued, according to Jeremy Eichler, that it's tinged with the "Christian triumphalism historically directed against Jews," and that "the Hallelujah chorus emerges as a kind of tuneful schadenfreude, cheering the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple."

Oy! Never mind the usage problems in the phrase "emerges as a kind of tuneful schadenfreude" - I mean that's a really big word, okay, from Europe no less, and I'm sure the Globe editors are doing the best they can. But as for Eichler/Marissen's argument - puh-leeze. Baroque opera queen vs. Israel lobby? Could the Messiah be so meshugeh? Hey, within the walls of the rad academy, anything is possible, I suppose, and frankly, the idea of some colloquy pitting queers, Jews, and early music wingnuts against each other makes me wanna shout hallelujah in tuneful schadenfreude!

Luckily, neither the Handel and Haydn Society nor Boston Baroque - who stage rival Messiahs - has been silly enough to have been drawn into this pseudo-imbroglio; but then they've always danced around the fact that Handel was probably light in the loafers, too. No matter. The Messiah is so obviously gay, swinging as it does between "depressed" and "festive" numbers, that Barbara Cook should record it. Messiah's Jesus is a single man (like Handel) persecuted simply for being who he is, and whereas Bach might hammer in painful details about thorns and nails, Handel (and his "librettist" Charles Jennens) dwell on the rejection of Jesus rather than his enhanced interrogation - their libretto is essentially a story of cosmic man-love betrayed and then redeemed.

And above all, Messiah is simply fabulous, with that "simplicity" being part of its mystery. Harmonically, it should be dull - the Hallelujah chorus barely strays from the tonic - but instead it's endlessly moving and compelling, from its opening promise of comfort to its final, softly reverential "Amen." Listening to it again is to realize that tying Messiah to the anti-Semitism of Christianity is a vain quest, because, simply put, Messiah is bigger and better than the religion it celebrates. Particularly today, bent as it is on poisoning the well of our politics, Christianity looks like a travesty of its martyred founder's dream - but Messiah is that dream made real, in which we're actually worth redeeming and can really love Jesus back. Of all the Christmas traditions, it's probably the only one with any real spiritual power.

And perhaps a gap in said power was why I found the Boston Baroque version, which charmed with its lilting, dance-oriented rhythms and consistently spry attack, slightly lacking in the end. To be fair, the group had spurned my request for press tickets, so perhaps I wasn't much in the Christmas (or even Chrismukkah) spirit when I attended - but my heart warmed to Pearlman's thoughtful program notes (which H&H would do well to emulate), and his light touch at first captivated me - particularly his sensitive handling of tempi. Pearlman basically always had his foot on the gas pedal, to either ac- or de-celerate, which often brought to Handel's famous tone-painting a startling dramatic power; for instance, on "And suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host," the strings swooped in with such dazzling speed that we could all but feel the beat of seraphic wings (Correggio's version, above left). And Pearlman was lucky in some of his soloists; generally, BB had better women, while H&H had stronger men. Soprano Amanda Pabyan sometimes verged on the shrill, but she sang with clarity and feeling, while Ann McMahon Quintero (who replaced ailing countertenor Alan Dornak) while not always dicting as clearly as she might, still impressed with the poignant color in the depths of her rich alto. Tenor Kerem Kurk, alas, had Pabyan's clean line but little in the way of emotional commitment, while bass-baritone Kevin Deas offered plenty of declamatory power, but again, little expressive subtlety.

Meanwhile, over at H&H, soprano Cyndia Sieden sang with transparency, and mezzo Catherine Wyn-Rogers projected a pleasing authority - but somehow both felt locked in a slightly rhetorical mode. Here it was the men who delivered the passion, with tenor Tom Randle, while a bit preening at times, still putting over grippingly sensitive readings of every line, and bass Christopher Purves making supple jumps across his range.

Where H&H pulled away from BB, however, was in their respective chorales. Pearlman produced a handsomely blended sound from his slightly smaller chorus, but somehow British conductor Harry Christophers (left) worked a thrilling alchemy with the H&H singers. I may have never heard a chorus find such a precise match between eloquence and passion - somehow the line between word and song simply melted away under Christophers's direction. Their acting was likewise exemplary - Pearlman hardly bothered to suggest the edge in Part II of Messiah (where the focus is on the trial of Jesus), but Christopher brought a very convincing sneer to "Let Him deliver Him, if He delight in Him," for example. And in the end, this commitment to the oratorio's human story, rather than any surprises in technique or interpretation, won the day.

Of course, truth be told, Pearlman's version, rooted as it is in period scholarship (and widely available on a Grammy-nominated disk) has probably influenced H&H more than H&H has influenced BB. And the crowd justifiably roared its approval of the Boston Baroque soloists, orchestra and singers at the end of that last, rapturous "Amen."

Still, the Christophers version was something special - and capped what has been an amazing year for Handel and Haydn. Their recent Beethoven evening was nothing less than spectacular, and Roger Norrington's version of The Seasons last spring was nearly as memorable. By any rights, the group should be at sea right now - they're still putatively in a search for a new Artistic Director, and have been hopping from one guest conductor to another for the past year or more. But perhaps because many of those guests have been such assured specialists in their respective repertoires, the group has basically moved from one triumph to the next. One can only hope their winning streak continues with the return of Christophers for the Royal Fireworks Music this spring.