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    Review: English Concert Brings Handel’s ‘Cesare’ to Carnegie

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    The English Concert, under the conductor Harry Bicket, returned to Carnegie Hall with one of Handel’s greatest hits.Less than 48 hours after a new production of “Giulio Cesare in Egitto” ended its run in the Hudson Valley, another “Cesare” took up the throne in New York City.The timing was purely coincidental but not that surprising. Handel composed over 70 music dramas, yet only a handful are still performed regularly, and “Cesare” remains his most popular.Each recent “Cesare,” though, had something distinct to offer its audiences. R.B. Schlather’s staging upstate was fashionably modern, with a liberal approach to the music. The concert performance in New York, presented by the English Concert at Carnegie Hall on Sunday, was made for faithful Baroque-ophiles: no risks, no frills, no excess.Almost every season since 2013, the English Concert, led by its artistic director, Harry Bicket, has brought Handel’s operas and oratorios to New York. This ensemble sets a standard for Handel performance in the 21st century, in large part because of Bicket’s musicality and attention to detail. Like a good wine, this music is savored, not gulped. No interlude is rushed, no aria taken for granted.Operas as concerts can be challenging, especially for a work with a four-hour running time, including two intermissions. Handel benefits from eye candy: flashy garb, elaborate scenery, routines with backup dancers — anything to keep hold of our attention. And yet if it’s not Baroque, don’t fix it. Carnegie was packed on Sunday, perhaps with people who just want good music performed well. The English Concert does that consistently.To write “Cesare,” Handel and the librettist Nicola Francesco Haym drew from fictionalized accounts of the end of Julius Caesar’s civil war. After defeating Pompeo, Cesare follows his rival to Egypt. Cesare intends to grant clemency to Pompeo, who is assassinated anyway at the behest of Tolomeo, the king of Egypt. Personal vengeance, romantic conceit and cunning tomfoolery ensue in narratives that weave among eight characters.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trinity Church’s ‘Messiah’ Is Still the Gold Standard

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      The church’s urgent and eloquent version of Handel’s classic oratorio remains an inspired communal rite.The holidays are a time for traditions — and for doubting them. Is Grandma’s ham drier than you thought when you were young? Is the movie the whole family watches every year maybe a little offensive?For me, the question on Wednesday was whether Trinity Wall Street’s version of Handel’s “Messiah” would be as good — as bracing, as riveting, as disturbing and consoling — as I remembered.Seeing Trinity’s “Messiah” for the first time, in 2011, showed me the galvanic possibilities of this classic work more than any recording or live outing I’d ever heard. This wasn’t the usual, quaintly sleepy Christmas routine, but a seething, electrically direct and dramatic enactment of an oratorio that both describes and calls for transformation: “And we shall be changed,” its crucial line promises.It had been a good few years since I’d heard the church’s Handel. But when people would ask me for a “Messiah” recommendation among the many options that pop up in New York each December, I always replied with a single word: Trinity.This “Messiah” long achieved its exhilarating quality because of an exceptional in-house choir and period-instrument orchestra — and because of Julian Wachner, Trinity’s director of music and the arts, who led the church’s medieval-to-modern music program with energy and ambition.Early last year, Wachner was fired by Trinity before the church completed an investigation into an allegation of sexual misconduct against him, but after it found he had “otherwise conducted himself in a manner that is inconsistent with our expectations of anyone who occupies a leadership position.” (He has denied the allegations.)His departure left one of the jewels of the city’s artistic and spiritual scenes leaderless until early this month, when the church announced that Melissa Attebury would be its next director of music. For almost two years, Trinity has depended on staff and guest conductors, including, for this year’s Handel, Ryan James Brandau.And what a relief to find that Trinity’s “Messiah” is still burning and gladdening, vivid in both darkness and light. If Brandau’s account lacked some of Wachner’s charged, even savage intensity, that wasn’t entirely a bad thing. The performance on Wednesday added some elegance to the urgent, heartfelt directness, the emphasis on communication, that has been Trinity’s standard in this piece.The soaringly resonant acoustics of Trinity Church smoothed some of the choir’s bite into airy creaminess, but the passion was still palpable. And while the orchestral sound was sleeker than I recalled, it had the same stirring commitment and bristling responsiveness to the vocalists, as well as a glistening, pastoral dawn quality to the shepherds.These forces are truly an ensemble, aided by my favorite aspect of the church’s version. Most “Messiah” presentations bring in a quartet of opera singers for the solos. Trinity’s soloists — almost 20 of them — come forward from the choir, giving the oratorio the feeling of an intimate, alternately sober and joyous communal rite, modest yet monumental.This practice also allows the ensemble to show off the strengths of its roster — no soprano is ideally suited to all the work’s soprano arias — and to experiment. In 2017, Wachner switched the traditional genders of all the solos, a change thrillingly recalled this year by having Jonathan Woody, a bass-baritone, blaze through “He was despised,” instead of the standard female alto.There was more sense than there usually is of the range of emotion within numbers, not just between them. The tenor Stephen Sands was calm, then pressing in the beginning of the work, and the soprano Madeline Apple Healey was sprightly, then tender in “Rejoice greatly.”Brandau guided the score so that “Hallelujah” seemed to emerge from the preceding numbers, which gradually rose in fieriness. And he, choir and orchestra built patiently to the work’s true climax — “The trumpet shall sound,” sung with annunciatory power by the bass-baritone Edmund Milly and accompanied with eloquence, on a difficult-to-control, valveless natural trumpet, by Caleb Hudson — before the shining waves of the final “Amen.”Though pleasant enough, a pared-down New York Philharmonic’s “Messiah,” heard on Tuesday, paled in comparison. Conducted by Fabio Biondi, the founder of the distinguished period-instrument group Europa Galante, in his debut with the orchestra, this Handel was a little stolid in the first part, though with more crispness and color in the second and third.Fabio Biondi made his debut with the New York Philharmonic conducting Handel’s “Messiah.”Chris LeeThe quartet of young vocal soloists made little impact in tone or interpretive zest; the star here was the venerable Handel and Haydn Society Chorus, from Boston. A few dozen strong, it sounded rich yet lucid, with metronomic clarity in the burbling 16th notes of “And He shall purify” and with evocative gauziness in “His yoke is easy.” Biondi led a lithe, brisk “Hallelujah,” seemingly designed to make this omnipresent number a bit more unassuming than the norm.Beyond the start of “Messiah” season, this was a banner week for early music in New York. On Saturday, the Miller Theater hosted the Tallis Scholars at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Manhattan, part of the ensemble’s 50th-anniversary tour. And yet more Handel: On Sunday, Harry Bicket and the English Concert continued their annual series of concert performances of his operas and oratorios at Carnegie Hall with “Rodelinda.”“Messiah” is Christmas music, but not entirely, since Jesus’ birth occupies only a few minutes of this long meditation on his life and example. The Tallis Scholars, though, offered a real Christmas program of largely Renaissance works focused on the shepherds who receive the news of the Nativity.Under their founder and director, Peter Phillips, these 10 singers displayed the floating silkiness, light without seeming insubstantial, that has been Tallis’s trademark over its remarkable career.With the parts of Clemens’s “Missa Pastores quidnam vidistis” interwoven with other pieces, the concert was notable for its exploration of different composers’ treatments of the same texts. Pedro de Cristo’s straightforwardly lyrical, almost folk-inflected “Quaeramus cum pastoribus” preceded Giovanni Croce’s grander version. And Jacob Obrecht’s plainchant-and-elaboration “Salve regina” came before Peter Philip’s later, more declamatory one.At Carnegie, the English Concert brought its characteristic spirited polish — moderate yet exciting — to “Rodelinda,” a work that Bicket has helped make a sterling recent addition to the Metropolitan Opera’s standard repertory. The cast of six was individually impressive and, even better, well matched. The soprano Lucy Crowe’s voice warmed in the title role as the afternoon went on, and her portrayal was gripping from the start. The countertenor Iestyn Davies, as her believed-to-be-dead husband, Bertarido, had, as usual, special time-stopping persuasiveness in slow music.It was refined work. But the performance over the past week that has lingered with me most is clear. If someone asks for a recommendation — for the holidays, or for music in New York in general — my answer is the same as it’s been for years: Trinity’s “Messiah.” More

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      Review: Handel’s ‘Serse,’ With Yuks and Exquisite Playing

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      The English Concert’s performance at Carnegie Hall showed off the ensemble’s elastic responsiveness.If you eat up Baroque shtick, as I do, the English Concert’s presentation of Handel’s “Serse” at Carnegie Hall on Sunday was probably right up your alley. Those with more rarefied taste were likely satisfied too, as the conductor Harry Bicket and his ensemble of early-music players offered up a surfeit of exquisite music-making.The English Concert’s annual Handel series — this performance was the first since a shining “Semele” in 2019 — gives New Yorkers the chance to hear Baroque opera and oratorios performed by period instrumentalists of a high caliber. A certain magic occurs when Bicket gives the down beat: The players unleash gleaming rays of sound from the Carnegie stage.The primary differences between the English Concert and a modern ensemble like the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, which Bicket has also conducted, are its transparent texture and alert responsiveness. The English Concert can slow the tempo or shave a few decibels off the volume from one bar to the next. There’s elasticity in the way the ensemble’s sound expands and contracts, reacting to fluctuations in the intensity of the characters’ feelings and enlivening music built predominantly from strings and continuo.Short ariettas and ariosos keep “Serse,” a comic love story, moving along. It’s peopled by serious historical characters — apocrypha be damned — and draws its humor from their unlikely humanization. Serse, the king, leverages his position to come between his brother, Arsamene, and Romilda — much to the delight of Romilda’s sister, Atalanta, who has designs on her beloved. In the process, Serse forsakes his betrothed, Amastre, who spends much of the opera fulminating while dressed as a man.At Carnegie, the jokes started early. Lucy Crowe’s Romilda made a surprise entrance by popping up from a seat in the viola section. Daniela Mack’s Amastre proudly brandished a disguise that consisted chiefly of wearing sunglasses. Mary Bevan’s Atalanta, an incorrigible flirt, made a pass at Bicket and then at someone in the front row. Twice. And there were more conductor shenanigans, a genre mainstay of recent vintage: Bicket interrupted a tense moment in the drama to deliver a most unwelcome letter. The audience loved it.The show’s star was undoubtedly Crowe, who tuned the color of her soprano to the music at hand. She summoned lovely, pastel tone and lambent high notes for “Nè men con l’ombre” and turned the brief but crucial duet “L’amerete?” into a fully realized scene. Clean attacks, silky legato and enchanting trills are at her disposal. If her refreshing impetuousness introduced a little roughness into her sound, it hardly mattered: She is a Handel singer to be heard.The expressive opportunities Handel gives singers constrained rather than liberated some of the other performers. The mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo, who released a stirring album of contemporary songs, “enargeia,” last year, was largely humorless as Serse, a self-involved autocrat who nevertheless must plunge into romantic fancies and explosions of temper. When the music aligned with D’Angelo’s stern portrayal, as in the fiery “Se bramate d’amar, chi vi sdegna,” it gave off sparks. Her voice sharpened into focus as she propelled the aria with biting sound and fleet runs.As Amastre, Mack’s dark, ruddy mezzo-soprano shone best against spare orchestrations. Paula Murrihy sang with polish but had difficulty finding the gravitas for Arsamene’s largely unadorned music. Mary Bevan relied on cute bits instead of phrasing to convey Atalanta’s coquettishness but connected in the character’s wounded moments. William Dazeley’s Elviro, a study in buffoonery, sneaked genuinely impressive high notes into his comic-relief responsibilities. As Ariodate, Neal Davies showed off a trim bass-baritone with some pep in it.With three hours of glorious music, the English Concert nearly banished memories of the three years it took for the ensemble to return. Next up: Handel’s “Solomon” — in only 10 months’ time.The English ConcertPerformed on Sunday at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan. More