Finally a Messiah worthy of a 21st century concert hall yet true to the clarity of period-performance standards

Photo: John Loper

I have to comment further on last night's premiere of Andrew Davis's re-orchestrated Messiah at Roy Thomson Hall.

Besides the fact that it was well-played and well-sung, the reason I gave this performance four stars out of four has to do with this paragraph in my review:

With this premiere, Davis is shouting out to the world that the modern orchestra can, and should, unabashedly perform Baroque music using all the instruments available to the modern composer.

What makes Davis's work important -- not a hubristic attempt to mess up a classic -- is how it marks a moment in history where the modern symphony orchestra can stop apologising for itself. Davis has drawn a line more momentous than we can imagine.

I owe my deep love of Baroque opera, orchestral and vocal music to the period-performance movement. But its very success has meant one almost never hears Bach or Corelli or Handel or Lully performed by modern orchestras. When they do program this music, they feel compelled to vastly reduce the number of instruments on stage.

Two dozen strings, a harpsichord and an oboe don't make much of a sonic impact in a place like Roy Thomson Hall. The Mendelssohn Choir, outnumbering instruments at least threefold, have so sing as if afraid to wake a cranky baby.

No matter how nicely balanced, impeccably bowed, and clearly articulated the performance, it's going to look and sound weak compared to Tafelmusik's, which is performed in a space a fraction the size of Thomson Hall.

I've wished for years that the Toronto Symphony would, one day, be brave enough to re-acquaint its audience with the wow factor of the Big Messiahs of a century ago, which used everything the modern choral society and symphony orchestra could muster.

I was also hoping that, if this happened, the person leading the performances would be able to figure out how to do this without making us wade through the awful, thick sludge of those old interpretations. 

In case you need to know what I'm talking about, here is Sir Henry Wood leading the 3,500-strong Handel Festival chorus and orchestra at the Crystal Palace in 1926 in "Let us break their bonds" -- followed by a typical period-sensitive modern performance, this one from last spring at the intimate Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, England, conducted by Marios Papadopoulos:

I wish I could post some audio samples to show how cleverly Davis has distributed the instrumental voices among the different sections of the orchestra. It's an amazing feat of arranging that barely disturbs Handel's overall harmonic and contrapuntal structure. Davis is looking for colour, while giving us the volume to properly fill a modern concert hall. It also allows the big choir to sing out convincingly.

Davis clearly knows how to work a symphony orchestra, but his arrangement of Messiah needs a bit more work. The more instrumental textures one juggles, the greater the chances of running into small clashes of texture. I counted a half-dozen bumpy transitions between sections of music, which would be easily solved with eraser and pencil.

As I mentioned in my review, the one thing that absolutely didn't work was Davis's use of percussion. My notes refer to "stray drumbeats" in "Thus saith the Lord," "stray cymbal" in "But who may abide" and "errant bell that sounds like an antique lift stopping at my floor" for "The people that walked in darkness." (The errant bell was a xylophone, I think.)

With a couple of exceptions, the percussion interventions sound like afterthoughts, not like they organically belong to the score. The orchestration should not make one burst out laughing if the text doesn't call for it. Davis was timid here and, I think, should simply remove the percussion parts altogether. Because the rest of his score is so fine.

I'm thrilled that Messiah lovers in Toronto have an incredible choice this year: to hear the tried-and-true period version of Messiah perfected by Tafelmusik and Ivars Taurins, or to explore a different aural world with the Toronto Symphony. Both allow us to not only enjoy Handel's Messiah, but also to enjoy and appreciate the full potential of performers and venue.

Comments

[Scott Belyea]

Hallelujah!

Davis's approach seems to almost mirror that of the (in)famous and much-misunderstood Beecham recording. As Beecham states in his worthwhile essay accompanying his recording, he's not trying to match the huge and "bloated" performances of the past century, but is rather trying to match the effect that the piece must have had originally, but in a large concert hall with a modern orchestra.

I'll have to dig out the Beecham (in my late father's elegant Soria Series LP incarnation). Not a replacement for the more "modern" recordings, but definitely worth hearing.

Anecdote - I recall being in the car some years ago when Jurgen Goth played Beecham's "Comfort ye" and "Ev'ry valley," with (of course) Jon Vickers. When it finished, there was a brief silence, and then Goth said, " Well ... if I heard that voice crying in the wilderness, I'd pay attention!"

Bravo Davis!