United States Handel, Messiah: Sonya Headlam, Erica Schuller (sopranos), Amanda Crider (mezzo-soprano), Steven Caldicott Wilson (tenor), Edward Vogel (baritone), Apollo’s Singers, Apollo’s Fire / Jeannette Sorrell (conductor). St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Akron, Ohio, 8.12.2022. (MSJ)
All too many performances of Handel’s Messiah encompass a cushty amble by the early Christmas-y numbers in Part I, a dutiful slog by Part II till (lastly!) the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ arrives, then again to dutiful slog for Part III. One of the best affirmations one may give a efficiency is that if it doesn’t have that shapelessness. As Jeannette Sorrell has demonstrated in her renditions of Monteverdi’s Vespers, having a mastery of the lengthy arc of a piece can change the way it comes throughout in efficiency.
In this Apollo’s Fire live performance, Sorrell made it clear that the ‘Hallelujah’ isn’t the climax of the work. Rather, it’s a sudden launch of stress after the climactic darkness which precedes it in Part II. She made certain the depiction of Jesus’s rejection had dramatic punch in two attention-grabbing methods. First, as an alternative of utilizing a singer with a silvery voice for ‘He was despised’, she forged mezzo-soprano Amanda Crider within the half. Crider has an earthier tone, which put much less emphasis on the quietly despairing phrases that hand around in the silences and extra emphasis on the turbulent center part.
After that, Sorrell set free tenor Steven Caldicott Wilson in his most dramatic method whereas the sopranos and basses of Apollo’s Singers left the stage and filed alongside the facet aisles of the church. Wilson may thus sing ‘All they that see him laugh him to scorn’ in an accusatory method straight on the surrounding singers, with the very best and lowest voices answering him within the following refrain in a scathing blast of sound. For the viewers, it was like being caught in a lethal enfilade in the midst of a battlefield, and it made hairs on the again of 1’s neck stand on finish.
By accurately shaping Part II, Sorrell’s ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ was rousing, however its dominant emotion was one in all reduction, throwing the true climax towards the top of the piece, powering listeners by Part III right into a masterly rendition of the lengthy closing refrain, ‘Worthy is the lamb’. Again, that’s a refrain that’s usually botched by low vitality and lack of form, however Sorrell made it a microcosm of your complete work, beginning with light lyricism, passing by quite a lot of moods that propel it to the closing pages which appear to open up the gates of heaven themselves, placing the well-known ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ in perspective as simply one other step on the stairway to heaven.
I heard a stable efficiency of Messiah a number of years in the past with Dame Janet Glover main the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus. She did the same factor, animating the much less acquainted components of the work to nice impact, however she took probably the most well-known first half as a vacation basic to not be messed with. Sorrell had no such deference, treating this 12 months’s efficiency as a brand new examine of the work, with new discoveries and inflections even within the acquainted components. Such reinvention helped her discover dramatic emphasis in ‘And He shall purify’, making it the second a part of the one-two punch following the quick ‘refiner’s fireplace’ sections of ‘But who may abide’. Speaking of that solo, baritone Edward Vogel was animated and commanding in his arias, together with a looking out ‘The people that walked in darkness’, abetted by a dimming of the home lights within the previous refrain and adopted by a brightening when he sang ‘upon them hath the light shined’.
Erica Schuller’s silvery soprano enchanted in a number of numbers and floated in ‘I know that my redeemer liveth’, a quantity than can flip mawkish if not lifted with ethereal phrasing. Soprano Sonya Headlam displayed an intriguingly contrasting voice. To name it ‘golden’ would trace on the heat and luster of her tone, but there was additionally one thing breathy and earthy about it that made her opening ‘Comfort ye’ actually welcoming, and the next ‘Ev’ry valley’ joyous.
The refrain, Apollo’s Singers, was crisp and vigorous, whereas the orchestra gave sturdy assist. Especially pleasant was the second once I glanced over on the anchor of the basso continuo, double bass participant Sue Yelanjian, throughout Vogel’s efficiency of the aria ‘Why do the nations’. Yelanjian has little question performed Messiah so many occasions that she may do it in her sleep. But as an alternative of being bored, she was watching Vogel take flight with a smile of enjoyment on her face. It’s a very good instance of what makes the ensemble particular. In a strictly musicological sense, Yelanjian didn’t need to be invested within the soloist’s success, however she completely was as a result of that’s how this group makes music. And that sort of vitality, that sort of dedication, makes all of the distinction on the earth.
Violinists Olivier Brault and Susanna Perry Gilmore had beautiful solo moments, and pure trumpet participant Steven Marquardt gleamed in ‘The trumpet shall sound’. Indeed, one in all Sorrell’s persevering with keys to success on this thirty-first season of Apollo’s Fire is that she will discover and weld collectively the strengths of such a assorted forged of elite interval performers and make it one thing larger than the sum of its already appreciable components. That she will do it with such a seasoned chestnut as Messiah, making each second as participating because it should have been to its first viewers, is nothing short of a Christmas miracle. The capability viewers at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church acknowledged it and responded joyously.
Mark Sebastian Jordan