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In accordance with tradition, the audience is invited to stand
REVIEW: MESSIAH (APOLLO CHAMBER CHOIR)
St John’s Smith Sqaure
GRUMBLE all you want about the commercialisation of Christmas – this High Street Holiday, this most cynical of seasons – but there is, and I intend to die believing this, something wonderful about this time of year.
Much of this wonder and magic comes from our Christmas traditions – or habits, for the cynics among you. Personally, beyond pulling crackers and wishing peace and goodwill to one and all, etc, I have two main traditions that define my festive season.
Every year I find a quiet afternoon (and pub) in which to read The Dead, that sublime, final story in Joyce’s Dubliners; and I attend a performance of Handel’s Messiah.
The latter tradition started when I went to an open air performance of Messiah with my dad in Fishamble Street, back home in Dublin, where Georg Friedrich conducted the first performance in 1742.
Having since decamped to London, it was nice to find myself in the slight chill of St John’s Smith Square on Sunday night, all set to continue at least one half of this tradition.
The setting was perfect. Amid the houses of Smith Square – all twinkling in their frosty Christmas splendour – St John’s was transformed into an intimate, candlelit hall, full of promise.
The bass (Jonathan Gunthorpe) was remarkable, not only for his smooth, perfectly enunciated rendition of the music, but because his passion for the story shone through. His performance was such that, by Part III, I believed that upon the sounding of the trumpet, the dead would indeed be raised, incorruptible, and that we would all be changed (as the King James Bible puts it).
Equally captivating was soprano Rachel Nicholls, who stood in for Lorna Anderson at the last minute. No stranger to Messiah, Nicholls’ voice soared, tackling each run of notes with a lightness of touch that made it seem as easy as a chorus of Silent Night.
There were flaws: both the alto and the tenor (Joanna Campion and Richard Edgar Wilson respectively) lacked the ability or the confidence to do justice to the more technical passages of Messiah’s Part I, and the performance as a whole, including the chorus, took too long to build any momentum.
Messiah should transport the listener from the opening sinfonia – Apollo didn’t, suffering from the fact that this was a chamber performance, in which individual parts of the chorus and orchestra were lost in a slightly weakened muddle.
Then there was the conductor (David Chernaik) who, while ably steering his ship, did so while flailing about like a conductor trying to garner the slightest flicker of enthusiasm out of a bored youth orchestra – an irritating spectacle for any audience to endure.
But none of these flaws – not even when taken with the two dozen or so latecomers and the mouth-breather beside me who fell asleep on my shoulder halfway through Comfort ye – could dampen the spirit of the evening.
Messiah is a thing of almost unspeakable beauty, so even a less-than-perfect performance like this cannot fail to go some ways to healing the soul.
Walking hand in hand with my girlfriend along Millbank, with the Abbey illuminated in all its glory against a clear London skyline, I was ecstatic to find myself in a new city, carrying on part of the traditions that make Christmas so special.
And unlike my Groovy colleague, above, I suggest you have that third mince pie – you’ll have 12 months to deal with the indigestion...
Merry Christmas! |
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