Music of the Baroque gives Christmas the royal treatment
By
Cathryn Wilkinson, Wednesday Journal
December 18, 2007
At the first Christmas some 2007 years ago (depending on your choice of historian), the rhetoric was all about the coming of a king. Pageantry and parades might have been appropriate to herald his arrival. So it is that Music of the Baroque's annual holiday concert last Thursday at Grace Lutheran Church in River Forest honored the coming of the boy-king with royal flourishes, trumpets, and drums.
Every December, conductor Edward Zelnis surfaces from his work behind the scenes as chorus director to command the ensemble. He drew most of the 2½-hour program from Latin and German church music-genuine Christmas music, with words from the Bible, angels, and shepherds, and good news. No department-store-variety tunes here, meant to pump you up with faux noëls in order to pump up the store's cash register.
Instead of "Here Comes Santa Claus," or a remotely familiar tune, we heard "Shepherds, What Do You See?" and "Jesus, Redeemer of the World," performed by 25 singers anchored by an ensemble of eight brass players, cello, organ, and contrabassoon. It's quite a racket when everyone is playing at once, but that was baroque taste-baroque meaning a grandiose and often overdone style popular from about 1600 to 1750. This music renders everything on a grand scale, just right to welcome a king with regal sounds and solemnity.
Nearly every work on the program highlighted the polychoral arrangements so common in cathedrals, with plenty of options for tucking subsets of the choir away in a crossing or loft or nook. Grace Lutheran offers three balconies, two of which the singers used on a few occasions for an old-fashioned stereo effect. For most of the evening, however, the choir stood front and center, which required some annoying, if orderly, shuffling about from post to post before each piece.
A program heavy in polychoral music is bound to come off like the Giovanni Gabrieli Show. The double brass choir played three of his canzonas, brilliant writing for the brass instruments of his day, that showed off their excellent blend and precision on modern horns. Along with the baroque "back-up band" of organ, cello, and contrabassoon, the brass also accompanied the singers in two of Gabrieli's motets. His rarely performed motet "In ecclesiis" is a tour-de-force, layering 10 parts in a knotty fabric of sound.
Gabrieli's counterpart, who ushered in the early Italian baroque, was Claudio Monteverdi. He wrote the strongest piece on this program: "Blessed is the Man." Like many pieces heard in this concert, this isn't Christmas music, but it is cheery and buoyant. The fancy vocal runs were almost delirious, a perfect ecstasy, interspersed with frivolous ritornellos for the instruments. This number, along with a closing five-bell extravaganza, decidedly un-baroque in interpretation, were the high points of the evening.
Anyone hoping for something on the lighter side would have warmed up to Henry Purcell's "Bell Anthem-Rejoice in the Lord Alway," with three male soloists in a rather operatic style, backed up with full chorus and brass. "Shepherds, Let's Go" is a bouncy French carol that plays up the cuter side of tending sheep. In a nice balance with the vocal works, the brass performed several popular stand-bys of 16th-century dances that showed off their finesse, especially in the softer sections where the tone resounded most clearly in the great chambers of the church.
Music of the Baroque pulls together some of Chicago's strongest singers and instrumentalists, who are able to deliver anything a conductor asks. Zelnis could have asked for more in terms of dynamic contrasts and crisper articulation. However, Music of the Baroque has stretched the term baroque in many directions, including away from what would be more historically-informed musical interpretations.
Their program is not authentic baroque, and it's not all of the season, but it is all great music that few other musicians will take the time to learn. On a rare occasion when musicians put on a program like this, the audience is treated to music fit for a king.
• Music of the Baroque repeats this "Holiday Brass and Choral Concert" Saturday, Dec. 22 at 3 and 8 p.m. and Sunday Dec. 23 at 3 p.m. at Divine Word Chapel, Northbrook/Techny. For tickets, visit www.baroque.org or call (312) 551-1414.
