CHARLOTTE, NC – While I’m not as faithful to the Yuletide visitations of George Frideric Handel’s Messiah as I was ages ago at Queens College CUNY, where I attended free concerts at least three of my four years, my diligence has lately improved. In the last decade, I’ve seen four performances, counting the one that launched this weekend’s run at Knight Theater, with Kenney Potter preparing the Charlotte Master Chorale and guest conductor Julian Perkins leading the Charlotte Symphony. I’d actually had my heart set on a Messiah performed at the Teatro Colón in early November, but an unresponsive press office and an unexpected dress code, discovered at the box office after we had landed in Buenos Aires, thwarted our plan.
Wrapped into our plans were an opportunity to hear how a Bach choir flying in from Stuttgart would handle the King’s English, and how the vocalists would compare with our esteemed Chorale and guests. Not to mention the fabled acoustics of Teatro Colón. Lacking those Argentinian comparisons, I can still say that the Chorale was a match for any chorus I’ve heard in Messiah, and that the guest vocalists were the best I’ve heard in recent memory, including those who performed with the New York Philharmonic in 2015. Those who look for a massive orchestra might have reason to pause before rushing to the Knight, for the scale of forces led by Perkins seemed more like the North Carolina Baroque Orchestra that performed with the Chorale at First United Methodist in 2018 than the band we saw at the Knight in 2017. Over a dozen different orchestrations evolved during Handel’s own performances of Messiah over 17 years, from 1742 to 1759, so Perkins could easily match a version to the number of his orchestral recruits.
Bass Baritone, Hadleigh Adams with Trumpeter Alex Wilborn. Photo credit: Perry Tannenbaum
Leading from behind a harpsichord – pretty novel in itself – Perkins had some interesting ideas on staging, deploying the brass to the balcony for their dramatic entrance into “For unto us a child is born” and then after intermission, bringing principal trumpeter Alex Wilborn downstage for a climactic “The trumpet shall sound” confrontation with bass baritone Hadleigh Adams. Otherwise, it would seem presumptuous to say that Perkins, for all his Handel and Baroque expertise, directed any of the four guest soloists at all. Each one of them was magisterially confident and self-assured. Hadleigh was not the least of them in that regard, striding auspiciously to centerstage for the first time and quaking the hall with his “Thus saith the Lord” proclamation. After delivering his towering “Why do the nations so furiously rage together?” rebuke at the crest of Part 2, Hadleigh loudly clapped his book shut and stormed back to his seat.
Tenor Richard Pittsinger. Photo credit: Perry Tannenbaum
Richard Pittsinger was not quite so flamboyant, for the tenor wore his hair the same way before and after intermission. But his impact came sooner with supremely creamy accounts of the “Come ye, my people” recitative and the “Ev’ry valley shall be exalted.” He truly made the “rough places plain” again and again with soft floating glides that never strained his breath control. Drama was definitely in his arsenal, just before the climactic “Hallelujah” chorus, when he delivered one of the more militant verses of the Psalms, “Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron.”
It was no less difficult deciding whom to love most among the women. Mezzo-soprano Diana Moore sang her first air, “But who may abide the day of His coming,” so richly and dramatically that I could hardly wait for her return in “O Thou, that tellest good tidings to Zion” and conquer its challenging low notes. Even the QR code on the program sheet doesn’t lead to the text, so Moore faced a more amusing hurdle when she came to the “spitting” in her “He was despised and rejected of men” air near the beginning of Part 2. Pronounced too diffidently, the audience might wonder what was said – too emphatically and you risk laughter. Passing that test, she went on to a satisfying Part 3 duet with Pittsinger in “O death, where is thy sting?”
Soprano Anna Dennis. Photo credit: Perry Tannenbaum
Less tasked and dramatic but far more lyrical, soprano Anna Dennis dazzled in each of her airs, especially in her first splash late in Part 1, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!” Here the refrain ideally exemplified how spectacularly Handel brought his lyrics to life. Equal to the joy she delivered here was the sanctified tenderness Dennis lavished upon “I know that my Redeemer liveth” launching Part 3. The effect was all the more ethereal for the effortless way that Dennis reached her highest notes.
Of course, the “Hallelujah” and the closing “Amen” fugue make the mightiest, most lasting impressions, but the Chorale delivered drama and delight all evening long. They were hardly accompanied by more than the harpsichord and organ until the brass and sawing violins exploded into “Wonderful! Counsellor!” in the incomparable “For unto us a Child is born.” The dynamic was no less dramatic toward the end of the evening when they reached the shuttling between gloom and jubilation in “Since by man came death.” Most exquisite, perhaps, was the delicacy Potter and the Chorale endowed upon “All we, like sheep, have gone astray,” seemingly more staccato than we’d ever heard it before. A disagreement seemed to arise whether it was “glorify” or “purify” when the Chorale broke into so many contrapuntal groups for “And He shall purify.” Any other blemish in the evening was almost impossible to detect.
This performance repeats through Sunday, December 15. See this link for more details.
