By Alan G. Artner, Chicago Tribune
December 6, 2010
For the first time in 23 years, Music of the Baroque returned to Johann Sebastian Bach's "Christmas Oratorio" Sunday night at the First United Methodist Church in Evanston. While the performance inevitably was full of compromises, it was nonetheless a success.
In fact, little better could be imagined to celebrate MOB's 40th anniversary season.
The Oratorio is made up of six cantatas written for performance on different feast days from Christmas to Epiphany. Bach heard the pieces only in the separate services for which they were intended. But more than a decade after he wrote them, he brought them together in the Oratorio, and ever after there have been doubts about this "unity."
The nearly two-and-one-half hours of the "Christmas Oratorio" are therefore a challenge for players and audience alike. Cantata form repeated six times can be too much of a good thing even when players on period instruments and singers specializing in Baroque music show complete command of scale, texture and color.
Jane Glover's account on Sunday was historically informed to the degree that it had brisk tempos, minimal vibrato and vocal soloists who brought textural clarity. But modern instruments and the size of the chorus — plus the church's reverberant acoustic — worked against lightness and incisive articulation. It was a "large" performance, ceremonial and festive, with several commanding solos from winds and brass, but only flashes of quicksilver brilliance.
Paul Agnew, tenor, was the lone specialist in Baroque and preclassical repertory, and his authority shone both in the moving storytelling of his Evangelist and incomparable fluency in arias. The others — Lisa Saffer, soprano; Jennifer Rivera, mezzo-soprano; Sanford Sylvan, bass — shared in stylishness to varying degrees. The women hit their stride in the second half. Sylvan impressed with gravitas, inwardness and power held in reserve throughout.
Glover's expressive shaping was felt to special advantage in the chorales, which can sound intolerably the same in piety. Here she varied them in weight and tempo according to the words. It was nearly as refreshing as her way with movements marked "lively," which for once really were.
The program will be repeated 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance in Millennium Park; it also will be broadcast live by radio station WFMT (FM 98.7)
