By Michael Cameron, Chicago Tribune
September 18, 2007
Just as modern cinematic comedies rarely garner Oscars, grand choral works that forsook lofty religious or mythological baggage in centuries past often met with snobby resistance from critics and audiences. Yet with the last major work in an astonishingly long career, Haydn broke the mold and produced a towering masterpiece, "The Seasons."
His earlier "The Creation" (1798) has always been a far more popular work (no doubt for many of the above reasons), but the music of "The Seasons" from 1801 is as great as any product of his fecund pen. While certainly not a yukfest, Jane Glover's consummate, jocund reading of this stalwart choral masterwork Sunday left many wondering why intervals between performances of this jubilant paen to nature and industry are so maddeningly long.
Music of the Baroque has always been a potent ensemble, growing considerably more so since Glover's tenure. Impressively, this opening concert of the season at the First United Methodist Church in Evanston found them at a still higher plateau. Its strings sang with the precision of a world class orchestra, the brasses were delightfully raucous, and the choral forces dove into their assignment with unconcealed relish.
The composer was not smitten with the libretto of Baron Gottfried Van Swieten. Yet he constructed a treasure from a text that suggests little more than a litany of Weather Channel forecasts, Field Museum specimens, and labor union bromides.
Glover and company lavished special care on "Erblicke hier" ("Consider this"), an ingenious synthesis of recitative and aria. In an era when plagiarism provoked flattery rather than litigation, Haydn quoted Mozart's G Minor Symphony, weaving a metaphor for the seasons as stages of life.
Yet as Glover's vigorous and visceral reading confirmed, the aging master far surpassed his sources to fashion a monument to the pictorial possibilities of aural art.
In still another vivid account of the potency of his depictions of daily industry, his "spinning" motive was deemed effective enough to be mimicked later by Schubert and Wagner. Throughout, Glover evoked countless natural events with an almost cinematic clarity. Fellow dog-lovers could empathize with the mesmerized sniff of the hounds before MOB's blaring horns nearly shook the sanctuary to its foundations.
The plot, such as it is, flowed from the lungs of Hannah (Arianna Zukerman), Lucas (Shawn Mathey), and Simon (Nathan Berg). Zukerman's high notes rang with depth and clarity, while tenor Mathey's hushed, affecting intonement of a frozen lake was chilling. The most complete artist-singer was baritone Berg, who fully inhabited a dizzying array of scenarios.
