Clarion Choir is the king of ‘Solomon’
Most of us, if we’re being honest, go to classical musical events and keep our eyes and ears on the star performers — the lead singers, the instrumental soloists, the conductor. But sometimes the stars are elsewhere.
During the performance of Handel’s oratorio “Solomon” presented by Cal Performances on Sunday, March 5, in UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall, the dazzling heroism came from the rear of the stage, where the chorus was arrayed.
Not that they got top billing. The headliner was the English Concert, the estimable British early-music ensemble led by conductor and harpsichordist Harry Bicket. Also on hand were a handful of established singers, including mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg in the title role of the biblical king, and soprano Miah Persson as his unnamed queen.
Yet Sunday’s 3½-hour offering came most vividly to life whenever the chorus got into the action. The Clarion Choir, led by Artistic Director Steven Fox, provided episode after episode of luxuriant and richly hued singing.
These artists conjured up a stirring air of triumphalism in the powerful showpieces that frame the piece and recur throughout. Fortunately, there’s plenty of triumphalism in “Solomon,” whose core message could be summed up as “Monarchy — isn’t it just the best?” Add some trumpets and drums to the Clarion Choir’s exertions, and you’ve got pageantry worthy of the name.
Elsewhere too the chorus rose nobly to the occasion. The first of the oratorio’s three acts ends with a sumptuously beautiful lullaby, as nightingales (that would be two flutes and a solo violin) and a murmuring assemblage of voices lull the royal couple to sleep; the chorus gave this piece a shimmery, quiet depth.
When Handel asked for precisely etched counterpoint, the chorus obliged. When he wanted vigorous power, that too was in supply.
“Solomon,” though, remains a tricky assignment — most notably because nothing happens. The closest the anonymous libretto gets to an actual incident is the dispute between two mothers over a single infant, which Solomon famously settles by proposing to slice the baby in half. That, together with the bustling orchestral passage in Act 3 announcing the arrival of the Queen of Sheba, exhausts any dramatic content.
What the score offers instead is instrumental color — the orchestration is large and varied by Handel’s standards — and the kind of grandiose pomp suitable for a king. The most successful performances, such as the 1998 account by Nic McGegan and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, embrace that spirit of excess even at the risk of cheesiness.
Bicket, by contrast, adopted a stoic, restrained approach that often drained the music of its color and vitality. Asking a contemporary audience (or an American one, at any rate) to take monarchism quite this seriously may be a losing proposition.