Symphony gets into holiday spirit with a magnificent ‘Messiah’
Handel’s “Messiah” is a marathon, a marvel of orchestral and choral architecture, a spiritual balm. A hair under 280 years after its premiere, it has lost none of its potency. However bleak the season may be — and this one seems bleaker than most — it remains a light in the darkness.
The pandemic’s toll on the world’s morale has been incalculable, but its threat to its choral organizations was existential. The fact that the Houston Symphony Chorus’ return after more than 18 months came with “Messiah” this past weekend feels almost fated: a gift, at the precise moment the city was in dire need of some grace.
But this was no mere moral victory. It was a triumphant performance, all the more so because of scheduled conductor
Bernard Labadie’s last-minute cancellation. Stepping in was Julian Wachner, director of music at Trinity Church Wall Street in Manhattan — burial site of one Alexander Hamilton, who was born roughly 15 years after “Messiah” premiered.
A composer himself, Wachner is also a Handel specialist who last year wrote an excellent essay for the New York Times about the many forms “Messiah” has assumed through the years. Addressing Saturday’s Jones Hall audience, the genial and selfdeprecating conductor demonstrated precisely how much more difficult it is to sing (and sing clearly) while masked. He then turned to the matter of proper applause etiquette for the two-hour opus, telling the crowd, “do what you need to do.”
As with the masked singers, whose pitch and tone hardly sounded muffled at all, Saturday’s concert was also noteworthy for the period-appropriate size of the orchestra: a reduced string cohort of about 30 players, plus a very small wind corps — just two oboes and a bassoon, joined with maximum impact later on by trumpet and tympani. A pair of keyboardists, Scott Holshouser on harpsichord and Neal Kurz on portative organ (a sort of mini-pipe organ), helped further knit together the ensemble’s remarkably full sound.
“Messiah” unspools in more than 50 movements, a succession of airs (i.e. songs), recitatives (wordier songs), accompagnatos (sung with orchestra), choruses and one duet. Keeping his tempos careful yet animated, Wachner was joined by four guest vocalists: soprano Magali Simard-Galdés, countertenor Lawrence Zazzo, tenor Andrew Haji and bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch.
The music Handel wrote for the soloists is so exquisite it almost feels unfair to single out a few. Still, moments that connected Saturday included Haji’s stately “Ev’ry valley shall be exalted”; Simard-Galdés’ luminous “I know that my redeemer liveth”; and Okulitch’s booming “Why do the nations all furiously rage together?” Many versions of “Messiah” favor mezzo-sopranos over countertenors, but Zazzo’s otherworldly register brought out both the unbridled joy of “Behold a virgin shall conceive” and despair of “He was despised and rejected.”
The choruses, meanwhile, covered the emotional spectrum from somber (“Surely He hath borne our grief ”) to exultant (“Worthy is the lamb that was slain”); Wachner sent several others into polyphonic overdrive, to dizzying effect. And as ubiquitous as it may be, “Hallelujah” never fails to deliver the goods, especially when the sopranos keep climbing on the “king of kings” section. Goosebumps every time.
Incredibly, even after 2½ hours, Handel saved his most thrilling music for the very end — the “Amen” chorus, which draws out those two syllables for what felt like days. The power of “Messiah” is such that it never fails to plant the seed that maybe humanity is not completely awful. This music is so full of hope and promise, still. Especially this year, the orchestra and chorus created something to be savored, and worth rejoicing in no matter your brand or degree of faith.