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?

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.

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."

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.