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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Richard Egarr and you-know-who.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandenburgs 3, 4 & more

Days and days have passed without my noting the lovely evening of music I heard last weekend at Jordan Hall, courtesy of the Handel and Haydn Society.  This was one of their "just us folks" evenings - all the soloists were from the Society's ranks, save conductor Ian Watson, who did double duty much of the time on harpsichord.  The program was centered on two of the Brandenburgs (3 and 4), although around these "greatest hits" of the baroque era were grouped a few pieces as obscure as the Brandenburgs are famous.  (I've never heard of Charles Avison, for instance, much less his Concerto Grosso No. 5.)  These obscurities all proved worthy -  and some, more than worthy - although the overall effect of the evening was bit like a very enjoyable lecture built around the theme, "There were many great composers in the eighteenth century, but here's why Bach was best."

The one outlier to this thesis - Henry Purcell - was actually a seventeenth-century composer of course, although his one piece on the program, "Pavane and Chacony," sounded like it could have been written by some young turk only yesterday, particularly the strangely moving pavane, which stretched dissonant suspensions almost past their breaking points (while conductor Watson allowed his players to slowly edge toward a kind of keening anarchy).  A highly unusual - and memorable - performance of a highly unusual piece.

Elsewhere, Watson (at right) cut a conducting profile that, as usual, was muscular, intelligent, and above all, heartily rhythmic; while this program didn't include any jigs or rondos, you still could have cut a rug to most of it - and it's somehow wonderful to watch a period band sway with the tunes they're playing as lustily as the Handel-and-Haydneers have learned to do.

There were, however, a few slight disappointments here and there; the Telemann Viola Concerto in G Major, for instance, was certainly lovely, but violist David Miller, though technically fastidious, didn't quite bring enough emotional expansiveness to his solos to make them transporting.  And even though much of the baroque repertoire is sourced in dance, as period music aficionados love to point out, still, dance is not the end-all (much less the be-all) of baroque music.  And so while Watson's approach often paid huge dividends, especially in the lesser works by Boyce and Avison (which proved perfectly smashing), I didn't feel it brought any new dimension to the Brandenburgs.  They danced alright, but not in any enlightening or original way; perhaps there's a subtle sense of musical space to these concerti that you can't capture through lilting rhythms alone.  I must at the same time note, however, that No. 4 was brightened by sparkling playing from Christopher Krueger and Stephen Hammer on recorder, and an almost frenzied turn by the great Christina Day Martinson on violin, and that No. 3 featured perhaps the most focused ensemble work of the program.  Still, I think it will be that grief-stricken Pavane from Purcell that I'll remember most vividly from this enjoyable evening.

The Lutheran hit parade

Yes, Hub Reviewers, there's yet more Christmas music to review!  Sometimes it seems like musically this season will never end - only frankly, I didn't want "A Bach Christmas," Handel and Haydn's intimate musical offering last weekend, to end.  This seasonal concert, led by chorusmaster John Finney, gives the H&H home team a chance to shine on their own, without any interference or upstaging from jet-set conductors or soloists.

And shine they did, in a lovely concert of familiar and obscure sacred music from the German tradition that reached its culmination in Johann Sebastian Bach (at left, with seasonal greetings). In his on-stage comments, Finney referred to his selections as exemplars of a specifically Lutheran tradition, but his earlier choices still felt quasi-Catholic (one, by Buxtehude, was drawn from medieval sources), and by now even Bach sounds ecumenically Christian anyhow.

Which is fine by me when it comes to Christmas programs. I'm no scholar of this period of German music, but I have to say that Finney's choices this year were remarkably consistent in quality; in fact the concert began to play as a kind of Lutheran hit parade. Buxtehude's In dulci jubilo was hauntingly gorgeous, as were Ein Kind is uns geobren ("Unto Us a Child is Born," after the same text as Handel's famous chorus) by Schütz, and Ehr sei Gott in der Höh allein (Honor be to God on High Alone) by Schein. Finney also included Telemann's sparkling Concerto for Three Oboes and Three Violins to give his period orchestra (led by a spirited Julie Leven) its own moment in the spotlight. The concert concluded with Bach's famous Cantata 140, Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, ("Awake, the watchmen's voices"), which includes beneath its bass recitative one of the most memorable melodies the great Johann Sebastian ever penned.

The vocalists, drawn from the ranks of the H&H chorus, were uniformly strong, with lush singing from soprano Susan Consoli and a powerful turn from tenor Ryan Turner in another Bach cantata, the beautiful but rather eccentrically-structured No. 122. Probably the best vocal performances of the program, however, came from local star soprano Teresa Wakim and bass Nikolas Nackley (who deserves a higher local profile). Together they made a delicately moving duet of Bach's "Dialogue between the Soul and Jesus." As with the rest of the concert, the duet was remarkable in both its spiritual depth and touching sense of humility. Humbleness is unusual in Christmas programs - the reason why, I suppose, is a depressing one, so let's not ponder it too deeply right now! Instead let's just savor its gentle power whenever we get the chance, as a few hundred lucky concert-goers did last weekend at "A Bach Christmas."

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!

Hammering it home

The belly of the beast: inside a fortepiano.

What does a player do when his piano breaks?  Onstage, during performance?

Well, if he's the unflappable Robert Levin, the pianist simply opens up the instrument, pulls out the action, and begins fiddling around with its hammers until everything is under control.

And that's what happened during the Handel and Haydn Society concert in Symphony Hall last Friday night, halfway through Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto. Conductor Bernard Labadie, the whole orchestra, and about 1500 audience members watched in anxiety as the intrepid Mr. Levin tinkered and poked, before finally giving a thumbs-up, and squeezed the whole contraption back together again by pushing the chassis against his gut.

In a way, that hands-on, how-is-this-thing-put-together aspect of early music is part of what I love about it.  And whatever Levin did, it worked - at least for a while (we learned later that even after his ministrations, the F# hammer remained skittish).  The second movement was exquisitely haunting - and it was clear why Levin had insisted on this particular (and particularly fragile) instrument: it's one of the few fortepianos in the world that can get as piano as Beethoven wanted, as its "soft" pedal mutes things down from three strings to one.  And indeed, in the concerto's melancholy Andante, the strings seemed to be echoing from some great distance - perhaps from some other, silvery dimension - giving a whole new meaning to Beethoven's celebrated sense of "musical space."  Elsewhere, Levin scampered and danced just where he should - and the self-dramatizing swoons of earlier appearances with H&H were held in check; this performance was a thoroughly charming one, and boasted a keen sense of dialogue with the orchestra, too.  But when it came time for the cadenzas, perhaps due to that troubling F#, the air seemed to slip from Levin's sails a bit, and things sounded impacted and tentative.  Which was understandable, but really too bad.



Ah, well - fortunately for us, the orchestra was in fine form throughout, as it was being conducted by Canadian Bernard Labadie (above left).  Remember that name - and trust me, if you get a chance to hear him, particularly conducting the baroque repertoire, by all means take it.  Mr. Labadie has an intelligently commanding style that drew a handsome magnificence from the two Haydn symphonies on offer - the "Hen" (No. 83) and the "Surprise" (No. 94), which of course is by now so familiar that its name counts as a misnomer.  Here was Haydn not as the witty raconteur we know so well, but as Beethoven's true forbear, with the great Ludwig van's sense of grandeur latent in the old master's more-intimate, smaller scale.

I always enjoy a program that has a thesis, and I felt that Labadie more than proved his - that Haydn's sense of musical development did prefigure, and perhaps even model, Beethoven's huge architectures (although actually, maybe the Fourth Piano Concerto isn't the best demonstration of their correspondence).  At any rate, beyond its "argument," Labadie's performance was marvelous in purely sensual terms - the strings were as finely etched as we've come to expect from H&H in recent concerts, but this time the winds were exquisite, too. To give you a taste of Labadie's magic, below is the first movement of Beethoven's third piano concerto, with Labadie conducting his home team, Les Violons du Roy. The pianist is the great Marc-André Hamelin. Enjoy.

Applause, and then more applause, for H&H

Harry Christophers in action.

The Handel and Haydn Society had a problem at its opening concert, "Mozart: A Musical Journey," last weekend.

The audience wouldn't stop applauding.

They applauded in between the movements of Eine kleine Nachtmusik, and then of course at the end, and then they began applauding during the movements of the "Turkish" Violin Concerto (No.5), too.  If they liked something, they applauded; and they seemed to like a lot of what they heard. Finally guest violinist Rachel Podger had to hold up her hand (with a sweet smile) after one particularly breath-taking cadenza to quiet things down.  "Hold on, guys!" she seemed to be saying - or maybe "Just wait, there's more!"

Of course you couldn't really blame the crowd for its enthusiasm - even though the cognoscenti in the forward seats began to look a bit irritable, as they traded glances that read "Oh God, we look like such rubes!"

I don't care much if I look like a rube, of course.  The hall was full of Mozart fans, and they knew great music-making when they heard it, and they wanted the musicians to know, that's all.

And this was great music-making.  The opening, over-familiar bars of Eine kleine Nachtmusk here sang with a such a subtle dynamic that they once again sounded fresh, and violinist Rachel Podger proved to be just as advertised - one of the greatest talents on the violin in the world; with her in the lead, the "Turkish" Concerto throbbed with such a heady rhythmic pulse that for a moment I was sure the whole hall was going to leap to its feet and start to dance.  Artistic director Harry Christophers has already won over the home crowd with his brilliant handling of the H&H chorus; this concert was clearly his bid to do the same thing with its period orchestra, and for most of the program he succeeded brilliantly.


Even the one real obscurity of the concert - the overture and march from Mitridate, a very early opera - proved intriguing in his hands.  The march in particular isn't merely an obscurity but also an oddity, with a strange, dissonant fanfare at its core, which the orchestra essayed with confident force.  It was in the final number of the afternoon, the "Prague" Symphony (No. 38) that it seemed the players lost some steam.  In a way, I understand why - or at least I don't quite understand why the "Prague" has such a high profile among Mozart's symphonies; this version sounded splendid, but a little "Mostly Mozart"-generic, especially after the eccentric profile of Mitridate, and the horns were rough here and there (as natural horns are prone to be).

It seemed clear, upon reflection, that Christophers had actually worked his real miracle in the string section (with, perhaps the help of visiting first violin, Aislinn Nosky, who played with pointed fire).  Eine kleine Nachtmusik was a marvel of exquisitely shifting emotional focus, all done on the fly, and the "Turkish," as I said, was a stomping wonder.  Although here, as the audience would have it, first laurels had to go to the guest star.  Rachel Podger has a happy, hostessy air about her that can seem a bit much at times - but dang, can this gal play.  I'd say she's the Joshua Bell of the period violin, except that she's actually a more sensitive interpreter of musical ideas than Joshua Bell, who pours that "singing" quality he has over everything he plays, whether it needs it or not.  Ms. Podger, by way of contrast, revealed an exquisite sensitivity to Mozart's various moods, and modes; the allegro was lightly spirited while the rondo had a deep, lusty power.  Above all - and this is a hallmark of H&H - Podger was in constant contact with her collaborators, often turning away from the audience to focus on the other players.  Amusingly, you felt a funny kind of social comedy playing out at such moments between her and Nosky - the first violinist was in a punk 'do and pants, the soloist in a garden-party gown; but this was as nothing next to their passionate connection with Mozart.  In such contrasts, and such cooperation, I think lies the particular magic of Handel and Haydn, and perhaps the early music movement in general.

Happy birthday, Handel and Haydn!

Well, it's not actually their birthday, but they're invited to the party.

When I ask people what the oldest continuously performing classical group in the world is, they often imagine it's some European symphony or ensemble. But no, it's actually our own Handel and Haydn Society, which was founded nearly 200 years ago, on March 24, 1815, in order to "promote the love of good music and better performance of it." [Note: the Leipzig Gewandhaus and the Dresden Staatskapelle, as well as the Royal Danish Orchestra, were founded earlier - much earlier - but it's my understanding there are interruptions in their performance histories.] In the pursuit of that goal, H&H soon commissioned work from Beethoven (a piece which, alas, was never completed), and gave the first American performance of Messiah (now an annual staple).  And over the years it offered American or Boston premieres of Bach's St. Matthew Passion and Mass in B Minor, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Mozart's Requiem, Mendelssohn's Elijah, Verdi's Requiem, and countless other major works.

Even more remarkably, for much of its history, the group was also entwined with - well, history; the Handel and Haydn chorus sang at the memorial services for John Adams, Thomas Jefferson (at which Daniel Webster spoke) and Abraham Lincoln.  The chorus raised funds for the Union Army, and performed at the official celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation (with Ralph Waldo Emerson as orator; Julia Ward Howe, composer of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," was singing). In recent decades the Society has had less of a political profile, but has become known as a leader in period performance - arguably the most important development in classical music in the last generation - while also exhibiting a remarkable freedom in its programming, collaborating with artists as varied as Chanticleer, Keith Jarrett (yes, believe it or not), and Mark Morris.

Now, of course, the Society is grappling with how, precisely, to celebrate its remarkable history - a history that, frankly, isn't all that well known in its hometown.  The group's first salvo in what looks to be a two-year campaign/party has been to simply get the word out about just how vital an organization it really is.  And that vitality is hard to argue with - Handel and Haydn has vibrant community outreach and educational programs, which this year will be organized in tight coordination with the concert season (Handel's Israel in Egypt, for instance, will be the focus of a special outreach to the Jewish community).  Partnership programs with the MFA and MIT are likewise gearing up.  And new artistic director Harry Christophers promises more recordings (like the lovely one of Mozart's Mass in C Minor which just came out), and there are rumblings of a tour in the works.  But right now you can join the party - and become a part of history - by checking out this weekend's performances of "Mozart: A Musical Journey," featuring period violinist Rachel Podger.  I'll report back next week on the concert itself, but given Christophers's command of the chorus, and the way he has subtly transformed the H&H orchestra, I expect the results to be dazzling.

Looking forward and back, with Bach

Daniel Stepner in action.

Last weekend's "Bach Portrait" concert at Handel and Haydn felt like the last step in what has been a year of transition for the venerable Society. New Artistic Director Harry Christophers was at the podium, conducting (in his inimitable style) an evening's worth of music from a composer not often heard at H&H of late. And at the same time, the widely-admired Daniel Stepner took his last bow as concertmaster (after 24 years in the role) with performances of the Brandenburg No. 5 and the Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins (BWV 1043).

In a way, therefore, the concert was somehow Janus-like in its profile, as it offered a perspective on the Society's past as well as its future. For many H&H subscribers, I imagine Stepner's farewell stole focus from the rest of the program; certainly his appearances brought the most sustained and affectionate applause. But the best music-making of the night actually came when Christophers was front and center, conducting two Bach cantatas with a brilliance and precision that reminded me once again why, exactly, he got the job.

I should add, of course, that for this listener, the Bach cantatas (No. 50 and No. 29) benefitted from the fact that they're unfamiliar (or at least No. 50 was, I was acquainted with the first movement of No. 29), and there's really nothing like encountering fantastic pieces of music for the first time in performances this damn good. It occurred to me that the cantata may be the form in which Christophers shines the brightest; he's a superb early music conductor who is also a former professional singer, so in this kind of music he's a double threat, and seems to attend to every detail in both orchestra and chorus.

Cantata No. 50, "Nun ist das Heil und die Kraft," is almost amusingly short - a beautiful blast of triumph (the title translates as "Now is come salvation and strength") that H&H brought off with both power and delicacy. The larger, more ambitious No. 29 ("Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir") opened with a glittering sinfonia (with chorusmaster John Finney tearing through a dazzling obliggato organ line) which led into a gorgeous set of arias and recitatives. The chorus sounded superb in its contributions, but the soloists drawn from its ranks were a bit variable; best were soprano Lydia Brotherton, who sang with light but pure tone, and especially bass-baritone Bradford Gleim, whom I haven't heard showcased at H&H before, but who is definitely someone to watch. Or rather hear.

The two motets on offer made solid, but less striking, impressions. The opening No. 1, "Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied" seemed not quite as crisp as its intricacy required, while No. 2, "Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf," was simply appropriately poignant (it was written for the funeral of the rector of Bach's place of employment, the famous Thomasschule in Liepzig).

The Stepner "half" of the program was likewise lovely - but the respectives beauties of Brandenburg No. 5 and the Concerto for Two Violins are both very familiar, of course, and Stepner and company didn't really have any interpretive surprises up their sleeves; this was intended as a last night of music-making among friends, and it charmed in that context. Keyboardist Finney actually stole the show in the Brandenburg, by once again catching fire in the concerto's famously difficult (and surprisingly chromatic) harpsichord solo; but to tell true, spaces the size of Symphony Hall weren't built with the harpsichord in mind, and I almost wished I might have heard Finney's virtuosity in closer quarters.

Sentiment ran highest during the Concerto for Two Violins, in which Stepner led the ensemble with violinist Linda Quan, with whom he has long shared a beautiful musical partnership on the H&H stage. The high point of their performance was the concerto's haunting second movement, in which the two violins intertwine in something easily construed as mutual sympathy and admiration. A feeling obviously shared by Stepner's many fans in the audience, who rose to their feet at the concerto's close in a heartfelt standing "o."

Roger that, Sir Roger

During the breather between Beethoven's Fourth and Sixth at Symphony Hall last weekend, conductor Sir Roger Norrington was invested with an honorary doctorate by the New England Conservatory (above). It was a charming (and affectionate) gesture, but in a way an ironic one - because it was Sir Roger who had just taught us all about Beethoven, rather than the other way around.

Of course here in Boston, we always imagine that we're at the head of the class, even when we're actually in the last row (Norrington's Beethoven long ago took the world by storm - indeed, it's hard to believe his game-changing recordings of the nine symphonies were issued in the 1980s). And while yes, we've heard Sir Roger often over the last few years at Handel and Haydn, he has usually been conducting Haydn (at which he's quite wonderful); I believe this is the first time we've heard his take on Beethoven live in the Athens of America.

Thinking again about the concert, I'm drawn inevitably to that tired old critical cliché, "revelation." I know, I know - if you don't like that hobbled old warhorse, try, as thesaurus.com suggests, "divination," "earful," or "epiphany." But really, the Sixth in particular was, indeed, a revelation - or at least a rapturous demonstration of the virtues of period playing and instrumentation. And perhaps it even stood as a witty, friendly rebuttal to Harry Christophers, H&H's current artistic director, who argues that period playing is best suited to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

For perhaps of any of the great composers, Beethoven has been most obscured by Wagnerian trends toward symphonic gloss and grandness. With the drier, more plangent tones of period instruments, you lose much of that golden, Germanic glare that coats so many modern performances, and suddenly a whole landscape of detailed musical architecture opens up before you; there were delicate little accents from the winds in the opening movement of the Sixth, for instance, that I swear I've never heard before. And Sir Roger's much-debated decision to follow Beethoven's own metronome markings does, indeed, sometimes shock (as in, can that theme really be going that fast?), but it also results in a sense of constant engagement, and transforms the music from "profound" pronouncement into brilliant conversation.

All this was immediately evident in the opening bars of the under-rated Fourth. Elegant, forceful, and beautifully constructed, the Fourth plays like a kind of turbo-charged classicism - but as it doesn't tap into the heroic depths found in its younger and older siblings, the Third and Fifth, it has never achieved their cultural profile. Norrington didn't, I think, change anybody's mind about that, and he seemed to lose focus in a surprisingly slack second movement - but he and the orchestra recovered brilliantly for a truly dynamic (even glittering) finale.

Then, of course, came the Sixth - the work you always argue with yourself over when you're trying to decide which Beethoven symphony is your most favorite one of all. Here it was leaner, and yet more lyrical, than you may remember it, while at the same time the scene-painting (the rippling brook, the bird-calls in the forest, the gathering storm) felt more specific than ever. Norrington generally kept things light and quick, but not rushed (perhaps he himself has eased off on the accelerator pedal), and he toyed bemusedly with tipsy rhythms in the "merry gathering" movement (with the winds repeatedly lurching in almost too late for their cues). The storm felt more sudden, and more tempestuous, than usual (kudos to John Grimes's galvanic work on timpani), and thus its aftermath all the sweeter. Like Beethoven's country folk, we, too, felt that something of great power and beauty had just passed overhead.

Beauty salon

Moritz von Schwind's "Schubertiade."

Back in the day (that is, back in the Viennese nineteenth-century day), musical evenings with Franz Schubert were so common they had their own name - "Schubertiades" (a drawing of such a gathering by a Schubert contemporary is above). People are sometimes surprised to learn that the young genius made his name in people's living rooms rather than the public stage, but in fact his musical output only occasionally made it to the concert hall. His operas saw a smattering of failed productions, and the symphonies sometimes made it to the public ear, but his reputation was built in the salon.

Last weekend the Handel and Haydn Society attempted to conjure something like a latter-day "Schubertiade" on the stage of Jordan Hall, and met with some (if not complete) success. The Society, which is devoted to historically-informed performance, has actually been tinkering for a while with not just the orchestration of its music but the presentation of it as well. The idea is that to really appreciate period music, you have to experience it in its original context. Thus Handel and Haydn concerts of late have turned into somewhat casual, omnibus affairs, like the famously sprawling concerts of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and we've been advised that it's quite okay (contrary to modern opinion) to applaud in between movements if we so desire (many people at Sunday's concert took the Society up on that one).

There are arguments to be made against all these propositions, I think, but at the same time they seem harmless enough, and playing nineteenth-century dress-up is actually kind of fun (alas, the fact that it is inevitably "dress-up" undercuts much of the reason for doing it in the first place, but never mind). What came over last weekend, however, was the difficulty of really achieving anything like verisimilitude in this kind of endeavor. The Jordan Hall stage was set with appropriately German-Victorian furniture, and there was even a gesture toward period dress (Susan Consoli looked both bemused and smashing in an early Romantic gown and feathers). An actor - Jim True-Frost (of The Wire fame) - was engaged to interpolate bits of Byron and Shelley into the musical mix, and there were even audience members onstage with the performers (looking a bit out of place as they turned off their cell phones). Nobody served drinks, but I'm sure that's coming.

The trouble was, of course, that the modern assumptions of class and comportment that inevitably arise in a space like Jordan Hall contradict the sociable, aristocratic intimacy that the H&H performers were trying to conjure. I got the impression that this kind of gambit could, perhaps, be pulled off in a smaller setting, perhaps in a Brookline or Wellesley mansion. But in a concert hall, even one as atmospheric as Jordan Hall, the proceedings inevitably become a bit arch.

There were other issues. Jim True-Frost stumbled through his readings, even though some were quite famous (such as "Ode to a Nightingale") and even though he was on-book. Sigh. I get the impression the actors engaged by H&H for these evenings (I've now seen three) don't always take the assignment as seriously as they would a "proper" theatrical performance (at H&H's last such salon, Nikkole Salter of Stick Fly actually forgot the immortal lines of Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 - amusingly, many in the audience murmured the missing couplet for her, from memory). If H&H is going to mix the musical and the poetical, it needs, obviously, to treat one as seriously as the other, with as much rehearsal and shaping given to the poetry as to the music (and maybe more). And let's not risk any more minor celebrities from cable TV, please, at least not when there are classically-trained actors like Will Lebow and Sandra Shipley around (come to think of it, that pair might have just pulled off this assignment).

Okay, enough said (but trust me, somewhere Shelley and Keats are smiling); back to the music. As noted, the concert program, devised by H&H bassist Robert Nairn (at left) was built around Schubert - we got both the "Trout" Quintet and the Lied which inspired its famous variations, as well as the less-often-heard (but still terrific) “Shepherd on the Rock,’’ for soprano, clarinet, and piano. There was also the lovely Andante from Mozart’s "Kegelstatt Trio" for clarinet, piano, and viola.

That was it for the serious music, frankly, although Nairn also programmed a series of lesser, but always diverting, works by the likes of violinist Giovanni Viotti and the operatic composer Rossini. These didn't share any great sympathy with the music of Schubert (or Mozart) but the conceit here was that they were devised for the great double bassist (and salon star) Domenico Carlo Maria Dragonetti; perhaps not coincidentally, they also allowed Nairn himself a chance to shine, which he did, along with the other H&H players on hand. Soprano Susan Consoli sounded ravishing on “Shepherd on the Rock,’’ which also gave period clarinetist Eric Hoeprich a chance to strut his eloquent stuff, and the Mozart was likewise subtle and affecting. And certainly the performance made a case for period instruments in all these settings - except, perhaps, in the case of the last offering, the "Trout" Quintet. Here it seemed to me that the fortepiano - or at least this fortepiano - came off as deliciously warm, but also a bit blurry (and to tell the truth, pianist Ian Watson was himself a little blurry here and there). Nevertheless, the ensemble was generally in fine form, with spirited turns from Daniel Stepner (whose retirement as concertmaster we still lament!) on violin, and Guy Fishman on cello. Together with Eric Hoeprich on clarinet, these old H&H hands did kindle something of the intimate fire that must have flickered in the original "Schubertiades."

The triumph of "Love"

I simply don't have time this morning for a full review of Handel and Haydn's "Zest for Love" program, which repeats on Sunday, but I felt I had to write a few lines to try to persuade anyone who might be on the fence, or who hasn't yet thought of this as a potential Valentine's Day treat, to by all means go. The concert is another musical "salon" from this always-experimenting company, though not everything in it is strictly musical: there are also spoken texts, all from Shakespeare, delivered by actors from the Huntington Theatre. The musical program, assembled by conductor Laurence Cummings, is mostly madrigals (and mostly Monteverdi, with Shakespeare at left), but also features two wonderful instrumental obscurities: a passionate Quarta sonata from Dario Castello - marked by fierce bowing from violinists Christina Day Martinson and Susanna Ogata - and an absolutely gorgeous Ciaconna from Tarquino Merula. The Shakespeare readings, subtly directed by Peter DuBois in an unexpected fit of maturity, were often superb - actor Lee Aaron Rosen in particular impressed (even more than he did in All My Sons); this performer could have great Shakespeare in him, given the chance. The H&H singers, particularly Teresa Wakim and Lydia Brotherton, were in fine form, and while diction was at times a bit blurry, the musical balance was usually exquisite. Perhaps most importantly, the evening's theme - "love," of course - was hardly given the swoony treatment one might expect on Valentine's Day; indeed, this counts as one of the deepest statements on that hallowed emotion I've heard in some time. The juxtaposition of Shakespeare's verse and Monteverdi's madrigals even opened a new window for me onto the Bard - but more on that later. For right now, just go. Tickets for the Sunday afternoon performance at Sanders Theatre are available here.

Period passion

Harry Christophers in action.

This is a quick glance back at "Passion in Vienna," last weekend's evening of Mozart, Gluck and Caldara presented by Handel and Haydn. The concert was widely perceived as the actual "premiere" of new Artistic Director Harry Christophers - for after a few cameo appearances since his appointment last year, it was made clear he had at last begun to place his unique stamp on the H&H style.

And boy, had he. I spoke with Christophers just days before the concert, and was surprised to find that almost every stylistic change we had discussed was already at least somewhat in evidence in the concert hall. In a word, Harry knows what he wants, and he knows how to get it. There was a lighter touch in the strings, and a more dancing (almost idiosyncratic) sense of rhythm in the ensemble as a whole. The "phrase," not the "effect," was at the heart of everything - and if you couldn't figure out what the phrase in question was, exactly, then you only had to watch Harry's full-body conducting (a happy regularity among period performance conductors!) to hazard a pretty accurate guess.

There was less of a pronounced difference in the chorus, because Christophers I think has been working with them with more authority and intensity for some time. Their numbers were augmented, however, this time around - yet just as in this winter's Messiah, this larger group was a model of clarity and emotional transparency.

The high point of the program was, unexpectedly, not the Mozart but the Gluck - the sequence from Orfeo ed Euridice in which Orpheus sings his way into the Elysian Fields. I admit I've only seen this opera once before, but I was nevertheless struck by both the drama and musicianship in evidence here. The British countertenor Iestyn Davies, who's a sensation across the pond, made a commanding Orpheus, the chorus countered with a truly chilling reading of the Furies, and the orchestra's evocation of the Elysian Fields was transportingly exquisite.

Indeed, the chorus and orchestra were actually in fine form throughout the evening. The opening obscurity, Caldara's "Crucifixus à 16" was intriguingly lustrous, and Mozart's "Venite Populi" was sung with authoritative dispatch.

But I confess I'm not always wild about Harry's taste in soloists. The quartet in charge of Mozart's C Minor Mass was, I suppose, "capable," as the Globe had it, but not a whole lot more - they certainly didn't match the artistry rising from the orchestra and chorus at their back. Soprano Gillian Keith for some reason came dressed for a cabaret rather than a kyrie (in a slinky black number with peek-a-boo slits) but more to the point, she vocalized in a slightly awkward way that blurred some of her ornamentation, and when she wasn't emoting generically sometimes looked a bit vacant. Mezzo Tove Dahlberg was crisper, and certainly more appropriately poised, but let out a squawk in her duet with Keith that I just couldn't forget, and meanwhile the tenor and baritone seemed to me nondescript. Fortunately the chorus kept us engaged - and in a way, perhaps we're lucky to be in a situation in which their contributions are what we look forward to.

According to Harry

I suppose that Handel and Haydn's new Artistic Director, Harry Christophers (above), had a right to look a bit - well, harried when I spoke to him recently (prior to their "Passion in Vienna" program, which opens tonight). I could sense that his honeymoon as incoming A.D. was over, and that the tough, hands-on work of bringing a new vision to what is literally the oldest continually-performing musical organization in America had already begun.

Still, Christophers was just as optimistic, eloquent and casually forceful as ever. He's a fighter, that's clear, in that quintessential British mode of light-touch-masking-steely-resolve. And he has a good idea of where he wants to take H&H - a big idea, actually. Christophers speaks matter-of-factly about a "world-wide impact," about future world premieres, about upcoming tours and CDs. The bicentennial of the organization (in 2015) looms, and by then he clearly hopes to have molded Handel and Haydn into a period orchestra and chorus to rival William Christie's little outfit in France, or Nicholas McGegan's in San Francisco.

This has meant, of course, re-affirming the early-music vision first instilled in the Society by Christopher Hogwood, who left the organization in 2001. Since then, Christophers notes, the Society has wandered as far into the nineteenth century as Brahms, and he worries that as a result its style has become a bit "diffuse." His goal is to back off from the Romantics, and concentrate instead on "a lovely balance between the classical and the baroque;" but one senses that balance may often tilt toward the baroque. Christophers is already insisting on a return to baroque bows for the Society's strings, and even means to abandon the modern standard of equal temperament for what he calls "a baroque approach to temperament" (by which I assumed - I didn't want to get into it! - some form of well temperament). And Christophers isn't just unafraid to embrace the softness of period music, he all but champions it, waving away concerns about the volume of period ensembles in spaces as large as Symphony Hall. "Modern orchestras basically play mezzoforte and louder," he laughs. "We've lost half the dynamic range!"

It's evident that Christophers sees his mission as one of restoration - not just of that lost world of pianissimo, but of a whole range of humanity that classical music abandoned over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. "When you're playing that loudly, it's hard to attend to different degrees of color," he notes. "And things get slightly metronomic, too - you lose the wonderful freedom, the ebb and flow of light and shade, the flexibility that the baroque had." And something else really gets under his skin. "Why is everyone sitting so still??" he sputters. "This is music based on song and dance! So why don't the players move?"

Not that we should expect the members of H&H to cut a rug at their next concert, he laughs; but Christophers has been coaxing them out of their chairs in recent rehearsals, and encouraging them to physically follow the beat, even if that just means leaning into it. "I had a lady once tell me after a concert," he smiles, "that she had come to hear the music, not see it." Christophers shrugged. "So I told her to close her eyes."

But it's Harry's "song" rather than his "dance" that has been rumored to give some H&H musicians pause. Christophers's claim to fame, of course, is "The Sixteen," the period-music chorus which he founded some thirty years ago and which has since risen to world-wide prominence. Today "The Sixteen" boasts its own period orchestra, too - yet it's not hard to see it as a kind of mirror image of the H&H model, in which it's no secret the chorus has long played second fiddle to the orchestra.

The moment I bring this up is the moment Christophers truly looks a bit exasperated. "You know, I don't think of myself as some traveling choral conductor," he says. "I'd get no pleasure out of that. Nor am I interested in simply transporting the sound of the Sixteen to America." He draws a breath. "You know, I was lucky enough in my life to have the opportunity to create an individual sound with a committed musical ensemble over a period of years. The orchestra was central to that. After all, I've been a clarinetist as well as a vocalist. Now I've been lucky enough to once again have the opportunity to create an individual sound. Only it's going to be a new sound."

Still, Christophers is planning to shine a brighter light on the H&H chorus, which vocal fans might see as merely setting a balance right that long ago tilted toward the instrumentalists. He's even thinking about a "project" for just the chorus next season, perhaps at a local church venue. And you can feel his usual intense attention to detail in his discussion of the chorale. "You emphasize your consonants too much in America," he mutters. I had to smile at this, as Christophers has brought to the H&H chorus a superb sense of diction. "Well, yes, of course you have to say them, you have to make the sounds!" he laughs. "But not at the expense of the phrase, of the arc of its meaning." And just as he's been coaxing the musicians out the chairs, he's been teasing the singers into a franker sense of emotion. "I tell them, 'Don't sing as if there were some sort of curtain between you and the audience!' Be present, be alive - use your eyes - connect!"

Of course even if Harry gets his way, will the Boston public follow? He's clearly been immersed in the vibrant European early music scene for so long that he takes it for normal. But in America, while the period music movement has more than made its case among the cognoscenti, the public doesn't seem to have come along for the ride. Most Bostonians, for example, seem unaware that the BSO, like most nineteenth-century orchestras (and yes, that's what it is), rarely programs anything earlier than Mozart, and that skirmishes in our concert halls regularly break out over the proper playing of composers even as late as Beethoven. In fact in Boston, oddly enough, the big classical news over the past twenty years has been our elevation as a hotbed of period music research and performance - but the old money in town (and the press) have pretty much ignored or downplayed the whole story. There's no regular period performance on the radio, for instance, and while the Boston Early Music Festival regularly draws scholars from all over the world, the city itself seems barely aware of its own prominence in this burgeoning field. It's as if we'd been winning the pennant for years, but the press hadn't deigned to notice.

What could change all that? For once Christophers seems to have a little trouble with his answer. "Well, it's going to be gradual," he finally offers. "And I think it's going to be hard," he allows. "I'll have to be here more, we'll have to do more. But somehow we're going to get there. Yes, somehow we'll get there."

And as I look into his eyes I see it again: Light touch. But steely resolve.