Two concerts of Baroque music
Philharmonia Baroque’s Segerstrom date included operatic score not performed since 1716.
Conductors like to stay put in California.
You might have seen Steve Lopez’s column about Alvin Mills retiring after 63 years as music director of the Brentwood Westwood Symphony. At the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Zubin Mehta remained 16 years and Esa-Pekka Salonen 17. Gustavo Dudamel’s current contract commits him to a minimum of 13 years in L.A.
Carl St.Clair has been in place at the Pacific Symphony since 1990; Michael Tilson Thomas became music director of the San Francisco Symphony five years later. But they are newcomers compared with British harpsichordist and conductor Nicholas McGegan, who took over the Bay Area’s Philharmonia Baroque in 1985.
Under McGegan, Philharmonia Baroque quickly became America’s most enticing period instrument ensemble. To show why, the orchestra headed south Tuesday and Wednesday as part of its 35th anniversary celebrations.
At the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa on Tuesday, McGegan led a performance of a major work by Alessandro Scarlatti that had been collecting dust for three centuries. The next night in Walt Disney Concert Hall, he turned to Handel with two stellar singers, Anne Sofie von Otter and Andreas Scholl, and also, with unusual imagination, to contemporary music by the 80-yearold Arvo Pärt and by Caroline Shaw, who is nearly half a century his junior.
There was one consistency through all this. As far as I could tell, McGegan never stopped smiling, clearly relishing every moment of music making. That, along with contagiously lively and expressive musicianship, is what makes him so successful. And he needed every ounce of contagion for Scarlatti’s “La Gloria di Primavera” ("The Glory of Spring").
This 58-part, nearly 2 1/2hour serenata is an interminable sequence of arias for four soloists celebrating the birth of Archduke Leopold in 1716 and praising to the heavens above his father Charles VI, the Austrian Hapsburg emperor. The libretto by the private secretary of a patron’s wife is a boastful bouquet of flowery sentiment embarrassing even by the standards of our self-promoting milieu.
In “La Gloria,” the four seasons vie for top billing. Spring, summer, autumn or winter each takes credit for being the time of year most propitious for bringing in the world a new archduke on whose fortunes the Hapsburgs will rely to make the Austro-Hungarian empire great again. Jove judges this beauty contest. Spring wins. But the god loves all beautiful seasons. Everyone shares in unceasing delight.
Scarlatti produced occasionally colorful orchestral writing here, although much that once sounded new, the peeping of nightingales and such, no longer does.
The vocal writing is lavish, if not fully memorable, and an outstanding cast of mezzo-soprano Diana Moore (Spring), soprano Suzana Ograjensek (Summer), countertenor Clint van der Linde (Autumn) and bass-baritone Douglas Williams (Jove) made the most of their assignments. Conducting as though having the time of his life, McGegan never lingered overlong on an overlong score. Musicologists can hear the recording with the same performers just released on the Philharmonia Baroque’s label.
The half-program of Handel in inspired performances at Disney on Tuesday night further emphasized the quixotic nature of reviving “La Gloria.” It so happens that McGegan has done invaluable Handelian service over the years with his persuasive performances and recordings of the composer’s many operas and oratorios that are unjustly overlooked.
The vocal selections at Disney were from rare operas (“Flavio” and “Giustino”) and better-known oratorios (“Semele” and “Solomon”). The "Semele" aria, “Endless pleasure, endless love,” was not one of them, but its sentiment was the evening’s overriding one.
As suave as a classic Hollywood matinee idol, Scholl is the Cary Grant of countertenors. There is great expression to his singing, with attention to the articulation of every note, but nothing at the expense of class.
At 61, Von Otter sounds strikingly fresh. While unusually buoyant and even flirtatious, the Swedish mezzo-soprano was equally focused on crystalline clarity. A lovers’ duet, “Welcome as the dawn of day,” was understated and all the sexier for it.
For no obvious reason, three pieces by a spiritual Estonian proved warmly apt. The string version of Pärt’s “Summa” is luminous when heard played on gut strings and minimal vibrato. Scholl intoned the composer's 2005 “Vater Unser” (the Lord’s Prayer), which was dedicated to Pope Benedict XVI, with devout intensity. The duet “Es sang vor langen Jahren,” accompanied by violins and violas, was like a distant romance from centuries past.
That this early music ensemble commissioned Shaw’s “Red, Red Rose” and gave the world premiere in Disney was a further welcome oddity. A simple song in a folk-like setting for Von Otter, the vocal line and resplendent accompaniment had the quality of operating on just slightly different musical planes.
For an unannounced duet, Purcell’s “My dearest, my fairest,” that followed, McGegan sat on the stage with an angelic expression and pretty much mirrored the performance. This time the blending of timbres, to guitar and harpsichord accompaniment, was such that a single voice seemed to be split into two genders.
McGegan offered a vivid account of Handel’s Concerto Grosso, Opus 6, No. 1, and a volatile one of Purcell’s Suite from the “The Fairy Queen” to end each half of the program. But even the 35-year-young Philharmonia Baroque at its alluring best is anticlimatic after Von Otter and Scholl.