Glover, MOB herald the season with a lively and moving “Messiah”

At a time of year when performances of Messiah tend to pile up like snowdrifts, Chicago-area audiences know they can depend on Music of the Baroque to deliver the Handelian goods with a professional polish that makes all the difference.

Such was the case on Monday evening at Symphony Center where music director Dame Jane Glover led the MOB Chorus, Orchestra and vocal quartet in a stirring rendition of the beloved oratorio that ushered in the holiday season in high style.

Glover and friends were giving the downtown audience a leg up over New York, where the splendid MOB chorus will join her and the New York Philharmonic for performances of Messiah next week at David Geffen Hall. Before then, the busy British conductor also will preside over a pair of _Messiah_s with the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus.

Conducting a virtually complete performance from memory, Glover made all the rough places wondrously plain. Her forces, including a chorus of 26 voices and an orchestra of 27 players, were small enough to ensure proper intimacy of expression yet large enough to ensure resonant impact where needed in the narrative of Christ’s birth, life and resurrection. Only minor trims were taken—two sections from Part II, four from Part III.

The music director knows Handel’s masterpiece inside and out, having led countless concert performances and also having recorded Messiah with Britain’s venerable Huddersfield Choral Society. Her interpretation brought Monday’s appreciative audience the best of two stylistic worlds—drawing on comfortable British choral tradition while freshening that tradition with elements of modern baroque style based on historically informed research into what Handel sought to achieve with his many versions of the work.

The result was overfamiliar music made to sound startlingly fresh and new.

Using chamber chorus and instrumental ensemble enabled Glover to enforce strong forward momentum with tempos that never felt rushed or, on the other end, overly slack. Her shaping of the long Handelian lines allowed phrases to breathe, all the while sustaining a firm command of the overarching narrative. Rhythms were crisp and bouncy, dynamic gradations subtly judged.

Here the rather dry Orchestra Hall acoustic actually enhanced her efforts to secure clean instrumental textures and crispness of diction (especially in fugal passages) from the excellent choir as prepared by director Andrew Megill. In the mighty choruses that are the pillars of Messiah the choristers sang with their customary precision of ensemble, full-bodied beauty of sound and deep involvement in what the text relates of Christian belief and spiritual redemption. Their fervent “Hallelujah” Chorus was just one pearl in a string of memorable choral moments: This listener won’t soon forget the magical effect of their hushed close in “All we like sheep have gone astray.”

A strong quartet of vocal soloists was at one with the conductor’s musical purposes.

Yulia Van Doren was a finely comforting presence in each of her airs, her soprano radiant and agile in a brisk “Rejoice greatly,” deeply affecting in “I know that my redeemer liveth,” the latter dressed in tasteful embellishments.

Sasha Cooke also did beautifully by the alto solos. Her warm projection of “But who may abide the day of his coming?” was vividly supported by the orchestra, and she drew meaningful contrast between the sadness and shame in “He was despised.”

The commanding tenor Miles Mykkanen’s splendidly heroic delivery of “Comfort ye” at the outset made one regret he didn’t have more to sing throughout the performance, although the fine fury of his “Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron” was another highlight of the evening.

One may greatly prefer a bass soloist but the musically conscientious baritone Will Liverman held down his end of things very well, rising to the vocal and dramatic demands of the exultant “The trumpet shall sound” in tandem with the fine obbligato of principal trumpet Aaron Schuman.