For me, a good Messiah is not muddled by Victorian applications of pomp and grandiloquence or weighed-down by its “sacred” subject matter. Nor should it be made into a dry academic exercise, in-line with trends in early music performance and recording that sometimes push for too much “authenticity.” It should try to bring something fresh to the table, by exploring new intricacies of the music, not with a Hallelujah Chorus more bombastic than last years’. It should still be festive, without forgetting that it’s 250 years old. While Messiah is sacred music, it isn’t music for worship and was intended by Handel for the entertainment of a popular audience. In many ways, it’s Christmas music more than it is Christian music and you see this in the New and Old Testament mash-up that is Charles Jennens’ libretto. It’s Christmas music from before we had Christmas music and Jennens is something of an 18th century Irving Berlin.
It’s a tricky compromise and there’s a lot of competition out there come Christmastime, but Boston Baroque, as they’ve done before, hit it right this year, as they well should, because just those slow and delicate wavering orchestral passages of the first tenor recitative Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people must be some of the most beautiful things in Western music.
Music Director Martin Pearlman attacks Messiah year after year (and on their spectacular 1992 Telarc recording) with an eye towards reinvigorating the music, while preserving its historical mood and intentions. This past weekend in Jordan Hall, Pearlman, offered us a Messiah that struck the perfect balance between everything the music should be, celebrating its nuances in an intimate, textured performance. Pearlman and his band just seem to get it.
The orchestra, under the excellent leadership of gifted violinist Danielle Maddon, played beautifully, superbly communicating all the moods the oratorio progresses through, from solemn mediation to soaring glory. Though up-tempo, the music never felt pushed. It always seemed to linger, as it pulled us into its Baroque rhythms and textures that were perfectly conveyed in this reading inspired by, according to Pearlman, Baroque dance rhythms and speech patterns. Everyone enjoyed watching Pearlman conduct seated behind his harpsichord, which is certainly not a contemporary practice, but one that fits well in an intimate Messiah concert such as this was.
Messiah, I think, requires that the soloists also strike a delicate balance in their readings of the music. It isn’t opera, and too much coloratura takes away from the song-like qualities of the music, trading diction for stylized flourishes. But, a voice that lacks color and sings in a dry tone is, well, boring–maybe a little too Baroque. Soprano Amanda Forsythe, whom everybody is praising these days, got the music as well as Pearlman. Even when singing in her upper range, her airs were clear and enunciated. She applied the slightest touches of color to the soprano passages, exploring all the rich nuances of the music without over-embellishment. Mezzo-soprano Ann McMahon Quintero, singing the alto part, offered a more dramatic and powerful voice, painting a lot of color onto her passages that pushed her a little bit in the lower range. Lawrence Wilford’s tenor ran toward the academic side and Timothy Jones provided a natural and unaffected voicing of the mostly recitative baritone part, that calls for a storyteller as much as it does a singer.
The small chorus was also strong and articulate, giving exquisite renderings of such passages as The Lord gave the word and Their sound is gone out into all lands in the second part. Sandwiched between these is the soprano air How beautiful are the feet, which Forsythe voiced perfectly.
The couple sitting next to me have been subscribers for seventeen years. This was their seventeenth Boston Baroque Messiah and one doesn’t need to go for seventeen years to figure out why. Their season continues New Years Eve and Day with a rather arcane comic double bill, pairing Mozart’s Bastien & Bastienne with Cimarosa’s The Music Director for which they’ve recruited the talented local soprano Kristen Watson, as well as baritone David Kravitz. Tickets: $29-$69.
