Bring back Handel's Messiah
BY ARTHUR KAPTAINIS, THE GAZETTE December 27, 2008
Only 363 shopping days before Christmas. An old joke, yes, but one with some relevance in the music world, where concerts are typically booked long in advance.
Which leads me to return to the Second Coming file. If we wish to bring back Handel's Messiah to Notre Dame Basilica in 2009, the planning should begin now.
Two weeks ago, I suggested the Orchestre M??tropolitain and its influential music director, Yannick N??zet-S??guin, could relaunch the tradition that the MSO abandoned after 2005. Another who could assume the responsibility is Bernard Labadie.
The music director of Les Violons du Roy has a strong following in Montreal. On Monday, he packed Pollack Hall with a baroque Christmas program featuring Marc-Antoine Charpentier's Messe de minuit (check out my review, if you please, at montreal gazette.com/music). A fourfold turnout for Handel's much more popular oratorio is a safe prediction.
Labadie led a notable series of Messiah performances in 2004 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and La Chapelle de Qu??bec, the Quebec City choir that functions as a sidecar to Les Violons. One of these was broadcast through the western United States on National Public Radio and in Canada on the CBC.
The conductor also did Messiah with Les Violons in Montreal in 1994 and 1998. Back then, other organizations were presenting it, including, of course, the MSO. Carrying coals to Newcastle, snorted I in 1994. The situation is different now.
My positive review of the 1998 performance was undercut by my unhappiness with "the haste and linearity of some of the choruses, and Labadie's tendency to jump-start openings scarcely a moment after the prior number was finished." Labadie is a high-voltage conductor. Not many besides myself complain.
Are there any other potential Messiah-makers? David Patrick Stearns of the Philadelphia Inquirer recommends the McGill prof and former Church of St. Andrew and St. Paul music director Julian Wachner.
"Few conductors have drawn such focused, committed and meticulous music-making from the Philadelphia Singers Chorale," the critic said of a Philadelphia Orchestra performance a couple of weeks ago. Back in Montreal, Wachner presumably could marshal McGill students for whom the evergreen oratorio would truly be new.
Christopher Jackson also used to lead his Studio de musique ancienne de Montr??al through Messiah, although this impeccable choir is accustomed to making music in places smaller and more resonant than the Basilica. The same could be said for Patrick Wedd (Christ Church Cathedral and Musica Orbium), Philip Crozier (St. James United Church and Saint Germain d'Outremont), Peter Schubert (McGill, Viva Voce, Orpheus Singers) and other choral directors who toil nobly with little recognition in this column.
Why not ask the MSO to revive its own tradition? Principally, because music director Kent Nagano does not think his players are up to the job. He prefers baroque music as performed by certified, replica-instrument-toting baroque musicians. In less than three weeks, Nagano will make MSO history by importing another orchestra altogether - Tafelmusik - to do the lifting in Bach's Mass in B Minor. ...Continue
