BEYOND MESSIAH
St. John’s Anglican Cathedral
Sunday March 8, 2020
St. John’s Anglican Cathedral
You can’t fault the idea behind this concert: to expand our experience of Handel as more than just the composer of the most famous oratorio in Western music. You would have expected Graeme Morton‘s choir to provide the bulk of this 75-minute entertainment – and so they did with nine works, the last two of them unexpected because very popular, even if neither of them has anything to do with Messiah. But Sunday afternoon also included two soprano arias – one of them that famous Handel hit, Let the bright Seraphim – plus an organ concerto and a concerto grosso from the famous Op. 6 set; well, not the whole of The Cuckoo and the Nightingale but just the opening Larghetto and Allegro . . . and not the complete No. 11 concerto, more’s the pity – only the opening Andante larghetto e staccato and its pendant Allegro.
When the choristers emerged, they reminded me in size of Melbourne’s Ensemble Gombert, a group I’ve been listening to with admiration for many years. Like the Gomberts, the Brisbane group numbered about 19 singers – although one of the more ridiculously irritating questions of the afternoon concerned a missing singer. Twenty were credited in the program; by my deduction, 5 sopranos and 5 altos, 6 tenors and 4 basses. As far as I could judge, there was indeed a bass quartet, imbalanced by 7 tenors. The sopranos numbered 4, as did the altos, although one of the altos sang that famous soprano aria but stood among the altos.
Of course, if the performance itself is engrossing, problems like this fade into the background. The fundamental difficulty with this Handel compendium was that it was being given in the wrong building. As cathedrals go, St. John’s is not particularly large (long) but it has a high ceiling which means that a lot of air space has to be filled. Morton’s singers sounded much too faint and underpowered for this program and, when the parts subdivided, the output was dissipated even more than in a normal SATB setting. Their supporting orchestra was populated mainly by Queensland Symphony Orchestra personnel: the associate concertmaster Alan Smith led a string decet in which everybody was a QSO regular except violinist Iona Allan and violist Belinda Williams who has played in past years with the orchestra. Both oboes came from the QSO corps, and the solitary brass player, Michael Whitaker on trumpet, is a freelance musician of excellent quality. But even this small chamber-size ensemble proved too powerful for the choir.
Of course, the building’s acoustic would be eminently suitable and flattering for a cappella singing, atmospherically suggestive to a high degree during major services and Evensong. But it was hard weather for all concerned trying to make a fair showing of Handel’s pages, even the more harmonically bald ones. Your voices tune that concludes the ode Alexander’s Feast opened the afternoon’s first of four sections: In Praise of Music. Nothing here to frighten the fishes – a fair number of high As for the sopranos and a solitary B flat, but otherwise the work is not taxing. Unfortunately, only sopranos and tenors were perceptible throughout. Things might have been even more difficult if the two horns that are meant to join in the mesh at Let’s imitate her notes above had been present; as it was, we settled in for a lopsided sound where the cathedral’s echo distracted from the score’s rapid-moving clarity. Still, the orchestral fabric sounded exact and engaging.
One of the program’s two Solomon extracts – the chorus Music, spread thy voice around – began without a solo alto, I believe; not that it mattered because the output in this quiet movement was reassuring with regard to the choir’s linear integrity although once again the basses failed to impress. Soprano Cheryl Fiedler made a straightforward attempt at the famous Samson aria although her interpretation was pretty unvarnished in terms of personality, but Morton whipped through the aria without finding space for any of those pesky fermate that most singers love to interpolate. Whitaker’s trumpet obbligato, despite the best intentions of the player, dominated the voice in duets; unfortunately, in the last echo effect sequence in the words their loud, Fiedler began with a leap of a 5th instead of a 4th – which wouldn’t have mattered except for the trumpet’s necessary duplication of what she should have sung.
You missed out on some necessary bite during the final Samson chorus, Let their celestial concerts. Not only bite but some dynamic oomph would have been of great benefit here, although you have to wonder what the outcome would have been if the original’s second trumpet and timpani had been brought in to the complex. After this, the movements from Handel’s A Major Concerto grosso proved an amiable interlude, well-balanced and notable for a spirited solo contribution from leader Smith.
The briefer second division of this program, In Praise of the Divine, comprised two choruses, both from Judas Maccabeus: the near-the-end Sing unto God, and the concluding Hallelujah, Amen. Both ask for three trumpets and timpani, as well as the ever-present oboe pair. Again, in jubilant works like these, you need a sonorous, carrying choral sound and the requisite majestic power came through only sporadically. As well, I missed the alto and tenor soloists at the start of the first of these works. Division Three, In Praise of Love, began with May no rash intruder (the second Solomon excerpt) which suited the muted choral output even as the sopranos were divided, although the whole could have been given appropriate colour if Handel’s two flutes had appeared. The second aria soloist, soprano Elodie Geertsema, worked her way through Endless pleasure, endless love from Semele. Like Fielder’s, this is a good voice best heard as a choir member rather than being asked to project an oratorio/operatic character. The process here became something of a trial as the singer carefully negotiated the technical hurdles; an effort, not reassuringly secure.
Mourn, all ye muses from that odd masque/opera/oratorio Acis and Galatea (the heroine’s name given an odd pronunciation by the chorister who read an introduction to this segment) came across with some sensitivity to its context, although a change of texture – some crescendo/diminuendo phrasing – would have been welcome. The split tenor line could have contributed to the textural smoothness of this small chorus. Phillip Gearing, organist and choir director round the corner at St. Mary’s, Kangaroo Point, played half the F Major Concerto on a chamber instrument that the Brisbane Chamber Choir gifted last year to the cathedral; a handsome and suitable offering as an alternative to the building’s impressive W. J. Simon Pierce main instrument. The smaller organ, also by Pierce, has five stops only, so Gearing was constrained in his operations. You might have wished for maximum volume in the first movement where the soloist was not really in competition with his string escort. Nevertheless, the work’s chirpy first Allegro succeeded markedly, the elegant passage work from the soloist a welcome pleasure.
Finally, In Praise of the Hero took to the mainstream with two choruses familiar to everybody, not just Handel lovers. See, the conqu’ring hero comes from the oratorio Judas Maccabeus has always impressed me as the British answer to America’s Hail to the Chief, even if the brassy President’s theme song has become debased by its association with liars and charlatans. The Handel piece opens with 2 soprano and 2 alto lines, moves to 2 sopranos before the eruption into SATB and a full orchestral accompaniment. In Sunday’s arrangement, the hard-worked Whitaker and Gearing gave an instrumental backing before the full orchestra entered, minus Handel’s two horns. But this was one of the program’s more successful events as the interpretation boasted some of the brio and flourish (if they’re not the same thing) of the original composition.
Sadly, the afternoon ended with the Coronation Anthem Zadok the Priest, this reading unhappy from the outset as the orchestral ritornello was dominated by the oboes’ repeated quavers above the first violins’ scene-setting semiquaver arpeggios. The original two bassoons were absent, as were the requisite two extra trumpets and timpani needed for the thrilling sonorous explosion when the choir enters. But here the choral forces were not sufficiently strong in volume and forcefulness to give these all-too-well-known pages enough affirming power. Even the tension-relieving change to 3/4 at And all the people rejoic’d sounded uninspired. But I believe that the most taxing hurdle that the singers had to face was their sub-division into 7 lines – except for the body’s most populous entity, the tenors!
Did the exercise reveal much of the unknown Handel to us? Well, yes and no. We really know a good deal of the composer’s work because a large amount of it has public currency. Both the solo arias, not just Let the bright Seraphim, are familiar; that particular organ concerto and that specific concerto grosso feature among the more frequently performed numbers in Chrysander’s catalogue; as for the Samson choruses, if you know any one of them, it’s Let their celestial concerts; Zadok and See, the conqu’ring hero are Handelian cliches. So a touch over half of the 13 elements on this program are not in need of resuscitation; nor did they expose any unrevealed parts of the Handel canon. Nevertheless, as a tour d’horizon where you were given a varied selection, this program fulfilled its intentions. Both the choir and its able scratch orchestra deserve thanks, particularly for giving exposure to some relatively arcane offerings. It’s just a pity that this event had to be relocated from its original venue – St. Andrew’s Uniting Church, a few doors down Ann Street – which might have proved a more congenial environment for this strong-boned music.
O'Connell the Music 