Life's patterns emerge in Music of the Baroque's exploration of yearly cycles
By Andrew Patner, Chicago Sun-Times
September 19, 2007
Haydn will ever be underappreciated. He lived so long (1732-1809), wrote so much (including at least 106 symphonies and 68 string quartets), was bracketed in Vienna by the more dramatic careers of Mozart and Beethoven and was apparently quite happy, so it's hard for many to find a "hook" for him.
When it comes to his two major oratorios, he is overshadowed not only by Handel, his model in this field of non-operatic vocal and choral works, but also by his own vast output in almost every genre.
So hats off to Music of the Baroque for reminding area audiences Monday night at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance of just how exquisite and beautiful these works -- which have not been heard downtown since the Solti era at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra -- can be in the right hands.
Music director Jane Glover, increasingly an essential part of the furniture of Chicago's music scene, had a hit three years ago with Haydn's most widely known such work, "The Creation," and followed that up with this week's performances of "The Seasons" of 1801, the master's last major work.
Spring, summer, autumn and winter are each given a treatment of a little more than half an hour, displaying not only the cycle of the year but also the pattern of life itself. The German text, from a cobbled-together, undistinguished libretto, is declaimed by Simon, a farmer; Hanne, his daughter, and Lucas, a neighbor, with a mixed chorus taking the parts of farmhands, vintners and common folk.
The text can have its dull and obvious passages, as this outline might indicate. But the genius here is Haydn's; he takes his musical settings for orchestra, chorus and soloists and gives each theme its rightful place, be it pastoral, temporal or spiritual.
The orchestra alone gives us dawn breaking, winds howling and animals making their characteristic noises. The chorus gives us women spinning -- with a technique that inspired both Schubert and Wagner in more famous works. And the soloists give us clear and pure human emotion and reflection on essential issues such as work, love and where man fits into the larger -- and, in Haydn's view, ordered -- scheme of things.
Glover breathes this music, as she does that of Mozart's operas. When will we hear her with the CSO? She understands Haydn's style, time and world without ever coming off as pedantic or academic. Just the opposite: Glover knows that this was a composer who knew how to express infectious joy.
And it is a joy to hear the finely shaped Music of the Baroque orchestra, which has gained in vibrancy and cohesiveness under Glover. Soprano Arianna Zukerman (the daughter of Pinchas and Eugenia) and tenor Shawn Mathey were clear, bright and appropriately earnest as the young couple. But it was Nathan Berg who rose to the higher level of his role: the hardworking farmer who knows the difference between the transient nature of life and the permanence of nature.
