Monday 14 December 2015

A supple rendition of Messiah from a modern orchestra and its chorus

This reviews Messiah, performed by Britten Sinfonia and Britten Sinfonia Voices

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
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14 December (link to additonal review added, 22 December)

This is a review of Messiah, performed in Cambridge by Britten Sinfonia and Britten Sinfonia Voices at West Road Concert Hall, conducted by Eamonn Dougan and led by Thomas Gould, on Tuesday 14 December at 7.30 p.m.





Part I

Adeptly keeping the movements ‘ticking over’ was one of the many strengths of this performance by Britten Sinfonia (@BrittenSinfonia) and Britten Sinfonia Voices, under the leadership of Thomas Gould (@ThomasGouldVLN) and the baton of Eamonn Dougan (@ejdougan).
With, for example, the recitative for accompanied bass ‘For behold, darkness shall cover the earth’, which runs into an air for bass voice (Robert Davies), the transition was smooth, and both from one movement to the next, and within them, the orchestra evoked a feeling of chiaroscuro that matched a text that told of the people that walked in darkness having seen a great light. Many believe that Charles Jennens, the librettist of Messiah (HWV 56), was also that of Israel in Egypt (HWV 54), which was premiered three years earlier, to the month (almost to the day), and one cannot easily forget the like moment when Israel is still in captivity*, and Pharaoh and the Egyptian people being visited by plagues…


In the following Chorus, ‘For unto us a Child is born’, one both experienced something like that halo effect, from a core group of instrumentalists, that one associates with Bach’s St Matthew Passion (BWV 244), and noticed how neatly the bowing and the turns, according to Thomas Gould’s example, were executed : in his writing, Handel has musically prepared us for the change of focus and for the pastoral mood that ushers in the nativity. Here, then, he gives us nothing more elaborate than a cadence, and no word-painting, at the end of the accompanied soprano recitative, when the shepherds were sore afraid.

 Nicely pacing the further sections of recitative, with these familiar Christmas passages from Luke’s gospel, Carolyn Sampson made us ready to be greeted by trumpets – and, nice though it can be to hear the expertise of playing a natural horn, we had the warm assurance that we were not going to get split-notes or wavering pitch from Paul Archibald and Jo Harris :




When, following this moment, Carolyn Sampson finally came to an air, ‘Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion’, the string ensemble that we heard with her was nimble, and her voice was honeyed, with only a little vibrato in the higher register. Straight after, alto Iestyn Davies had a recitative, and then an air, and there seemed to be a tranquillity not just to such words as He shall feed His flock like a shepherd ; and He shall gather the lambs with His Arm, but to his voice itself. In another air, Sampson employed a little coloratura, and then there was a Chorus that closed Part I.



Part II

In the alto air ‘He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows’, following a short initial Chorus, Iestyn Davies was superbly judged as to pacing, and depth of tone – in a movement that is best with a careful and controlled overview, it was a delight to hear an approach gained from an experience of operatic roles put to good use.

As noted below (in the second paragraph, below, concerning Part III), and with Gould’s skilled leading, Dougan had chosen to emphasize the concerto feel in Handel’s score, probably in conjunction with how portamento was employed in the alto part. Thus, there were longer bow-strokes, but also Spring-like flourishes, and, with the string-colour, they made an excellent match with the celebrated purity of Davies’ timbre.


Particularly in the Chorus ‘Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows’, Emma Feilding and Jessica Mogridge beautifully interpreted the writing for oboe, which one was excellently placed to hear**. The size of the orchestra (and of the venue) means that one can appreciate it as a pervasive aspect (rather than Handel’s occasionally using brass), which makes for a very significant part of the sound of the work. (It has not been noticed before, but, in the Kyrie of the Requiem Mass in D Minor (K. 626), is Mozart making a reference to Messiah here, with his choice of fugal-subject ?)


In an important sequence linked by tenor voice, two passages of accompanied recitative (the first was heard with vibrant, angular strings) led up to a very modern-sounding air. Before it, in the second section of recitative, Allan Clayton movingly gave us the hollow feeling of the Messiah in the situation described by the text, and in the deepening of the hurt, with the repeated words in the second half of the sentence :

 Thy rebuke hath broken His heart ; He is full of heaviness
The second air, after even more desolate words from Isaiah (He was cut off out of the land of the living ; for the transgressions of Thy people was He stricken), reapplies them prophetically, and the gospel perspective accordingly changes the viewpoint completely to the divine one (with But Thou didst not leave His soul in hell, nor didst Thou suffer Thy Holy One to see corruption).

Although there is brief refreshment in the lovely soprano air ‘How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace’, in which we felt solace through Sampson’s voice, Part II continues, and concludes, in a less personal vein of theology in global terms : the refusal of God’s authority, rebellion against his rule, and the vanquishment of the rebels (when the libretto has ‘the Lord shall have them in derision’, Dougan had that laughter in the strings). Victory and a celebratory frame of mind are part of the pattern here.

 From the perspective of the Hanoverians, the way in which, just four years later, The Jacobite Rebellion was to be bloodily put down would be seen just in these terms, beginning by how it ended disastrously for the Jacobite cause at The Battle of Culloden (on 16 April 1746, again almost to the day).

In this performance of Part II, the Chorus 'Hallelujah, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth', with which it concludes, was attended with great dignity, but avoiding the not unusual sense of pomp (or, as far as one was aware, people standing in some sort of patriotic erectness), which can draw too much notice to the form, rather than the intention, of the libretto. A modest pause then preceded Part III.



Part III

 Maybe it was no more than having stayed three times near Fishamble Street in Dublin, and been taken, during a literary guided walk, to the site of the Great Music Hall there where Messiah had first been performed (on 13 April 1742), but there seemed to be an Irishness, in the lilt of the voice, and tone of the instrumentalists, to the famous soprano air that starts Part III, ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’. Sampson was radiant, as she had been throughout the evening, and clearly relished embodying conviction in this number.

 In the opening alto air from Part II, one had been struck by the impression of early concerto-writing, with Dougan and Gould bringing out variations in attack and feeling between adjoining passages (please see the second paragraph, above, concerning Part II) : here, the delivery was much more legato, and with delicate flourishes. Continuing with the Chorus ‘Since by man came death’, we had contrasts in mood from soft to declamatory, as between ‘death’ and ‘resurrection’ – within each half of the two scriptural sentences, and between them.


When it came, soon after, to the equally famous ‘The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible’, trumpeter Paul Archibald perfectly accommodated the bass voice of Robert Davies, and in an ensemble whose sound had been integrated and equitably balanced all evening. A peculiarity of the setting (which was one aspect that the pre-concert discussion had addressed, though not this specific point) is the dual rendering of the word ‘raised’ here (and of other words earlier***), a question to which one was made alert from having read Claire Tomalin’s biography of one-time Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, Jonathan Swift.

When we first hear ‘raised’ in this bass air, it is as a one-syllable word : Tomalin tells us that, in Swift and Handel’s time, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, a literary battle had raged, whether to make it the convention that such a word as ‘raised’, when the –ed ending is not separately sounded, should always be written ‘rais’d’. (With ‘sounded’ itself of course, used in the last sentence, there can be no doubt, because it inevitably has two syllables : in this sentence, then, if those arguing for the convention had not failed, we would now write ‘us’d’****.)

 To recap, when we first (and also in the repeat) hear the words ‘the dead shall be raised’, the word is one syllable, but, when Handel jumps straight back to focus on a shorter part of the phrase, he makes it two syllables. (Indeed, and as we may be used to in choral singing, look through the libretto of Messiah, and, in most words with an –ed ending, it is sounded.) No doubt musicologists have theorized why that is so in the case of this pairing, but the effect appears to be this : that we notice the word less the first time, but, when it immediately reappears in this two-syllable form, it allows Handel to dwell on it with the voice, and draw attention to it as an action.


The soprano air ‘If God be for us, who can be against us’ is the last item with a soloist in Messiah, and this was a very special moment. Not uniquely, the Sinfonia reduced here to a small group of instruments (which was probably Caroline Dearnley on cello, Benjamin Russell (bass), Stephen Farr (organ), with leader Thomas Gould), since one can hear other examples of this sort of treatment (or even, for example, see soprano Lynne Dawson here, with an ensemble [the clip has no acknowledgements] where, in much younger days, Stephen Cleobury is the conductor (but here just brings the players in)).

However, in playing obbligato for this air, Gould brought so much more expressiveness than in that example, and such sensitivity to playing to accord with Carolyn Sampson and her voice, that the experience was a thing of beauty : with one’s unquestioned mainstay for the piece in the group of Sinfonia players, the sense of adventurousness, even riskiness, in his playing, and how it fitted to her artistry, was compelling. As one says, the moment was very special, and (as, in contrast to those, say, in the St Matthew) it then almost made Handel’s task harder in achieving the effect of the concluding Choruses :

Given post-mediaeval precedents such as Palestrina, Handel is not the first person to set the single word Amen as a movement, but he is scarcely writing in that musical tradition (unless we remember that we are in Dublin ?). Yet does he do so here at such length that it might feel like pastiche (if not, maybe, an extended musical-joke ?) – certainly to begin with, and partly in relation to what preceded, one did wonder.





Possibly one is always wise to wonder, a little, at Handel and his exact motives, but in time the Chorus did build beyond feeling as though it were an exercise, and made an impressive and agreeable end to this evening with Carolyn Sampson, Iestyn Davies, Allan Clayton, Robert Davies, Eamonn Dougan, Thomas Gould, and the whole of Britten Sinfonia and Britten Sinfonia Voices.








End-notes

 * Moses is, of course, looked to as a precursor to the figure of Christ, and likewise the deliverance from bondage and across The Red Sea.

** It is always nice to listen out for Sarah Burnett’s contribution, as the Sinfonia’s principal bassoonist, but doing so is made easier when there is a visual link, and podium and other players intervened this time.

*** For example, in the first Chorus in Part I (just after the air for tenor ‘Every valley shall be exalted’), when we first hear the words And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, that final word ‘revealed’ is two syllables, but it is then sounded as just one.

**** On account of how the dispute became resolved for ordinary writing (if not for scores), we now write raiséd, when we wish to indicate that it is two sounds, but our norm is not to put ‘rais’d’ for one (although one will find that form appearing in texts that have not been modernized when edited).

Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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