Messiah brings comfort
Despite the passage of the years, Handel’s Messiah still holds its place as the single most familiar and beloved work of classical music — at least in the English-speaking world. And this year, as every year, the Calgary Philharmonic orchestra and its chorus presented Messiah to a large audience happy once again to experience the musical comfort this great work always brings.
In recent years the performances of Messiah have been conducted by Ivars Taurins, with Timothy Shantz serving as the chorusmaster. This year Shantz took the helm himself, leading all the forces in a performance that offered a rather different view of the work.
While Taurins has much choral experience, he nevertheless brings to his conducting the instincts of a string and orchestral player. By contrast, Shantz is more purely choral and vocal in his musical orientation. The resulting difference was a performance in which the choral element predominated, with the choral and speech rhythms of the music transplanted into the orchestral fabric.
Despite the numerous touches of ornamentation and the relatively brisk tempos, this was a version of Messiah familiar from my youth and from my own choral experience as a singer and conductor, a time when almost all Messiah performances were led by choral directors. This vocal emphasis, also evident in the approach taken in the solo numbers, gave the evening a notable warmth.
The chorus, now thoroughly familiar with the music, sang with confidence, the 100-plus members of the ensemble wellbalanced in tone. The bass section was stronger this year, with no loss of quality in the upper voices, and as a group it was able to bring true choral thrills to the hallelujah chorus. Equally fine were the performances of some of the most challenging numbers, such as his yoke is easy and all we like sheep. The best came at the end, however, with a stirring account of the great worthy is the lamb chorus, and the concluding amen chorus.
The quartet of Canadian soloists were also worthy of their assignments. Soprano Shannon Mercer is, perhaps, more of a lyric soprano than a coloratura, and she was particularly effective in her singing of I Know That My Redeemer Liveth and the preceding But Thou Didst Not Leave. She was marginally less comfortable in the famous Rejoice Greatly.
Mezzo-soprano Kristina Szabo has a strong, characterful voice that was heard to very good effect in her solos, even if some of the music lies a little lower than is completely comfortable for her. Her singing of He Shall Feed his Flock was beautifully handled, with nuance and grace.
Tenor Lawrence Wiliford is a well-disciplined lyric tenor, and this part suits him exceptionally well. All his solos had the expression and character they require, and at no point was he stretched vocally, his voice free and full at all time.
Baritone Nathaniel Watson is also a singer of considerable accomplishment and had no difficulty with any of his arias. Having a relatively high voice, he managed the tessitura of the trumpet shall sound without strain; some of the lower-lying numbers were however, a trifle lacking in vocal weight.
The compact orchestra played well, even if they did not get a great amount of attention from Shantz, whose focus was largely on the chorus.
If this was, in many ways, a traditional account of the work, it was also an expressive one and a performance that the audience greatly enjoyed.