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CHORAL REVIEW
Early Handel, Already Great February 23, 2002
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By Kip Cranna
Handel's oratorio Esther is based on the biblical story that inspired the Jewish festival of Purim being celebrated this week. With apt timing, Jeffrey Thomas and his redoubtable American Bach Soloists brought one of their series of performances of Esther to San Francisco's Temple Emanu-El on Saturday, February 23. The result was a reasonably successful and thoroughly enjoyable glimpse of the beginnings of a great composer's glorious oratorio career.
Thomas presented the early version of the work (the original title, Haman and Mordecai: A Masque, oddly omits the heroine's name), written for Handel's patron the Duke of Chandos in 1718. (It was a much-expanded version of Esther in 1732 that finally launched Handel on the road to oratorio fame.)
The sketchy text, based loosely on a French biblical drama by Racine, is anonymous, but both Alexander Pope and John Arbuthnot are believed to have had a hand. It omits several key scenes from the biblical story — no doubt on the assumption that it was well known to its audience — and concentrates on the central human conflict: Esther courageously decides to reveal her Jewish kinship to her husband, the Persian King Ahasuerus (Xerxes I), and saves her people by denouncing the king's evil minister Haman and blocking his vengeful plan to execute her cousin Mordecai and massacre the Jews in Persia. Perhaps the editing is for the best, since Esther represents one of those bloody biblical episodes whose gory details understandably get glossed over. (After the planned pogrom is thwarted, as the King James Version tells it, "The Jews that were in the king's provinces gathered themselves together . . . and slew of their foes seventy and five thousand.")
Music Director Thomas prefaced his performance with an advisory reminder, assembled a distinguished array of solo, choral, and orchestral forces, and led them with steady assurance, choosing moderate tempi and shaping carefully-controlled cadences. He took a cautious approach to the overture, which was dominated by Stephen Hammer's proficient oboe solos. Hammer and the violins, with which he mostly played in unison, were not always in close agreement about intonation. The deft professional chorus stood in single file, which made blend difficult but did not seem to detract from ensemble. They sang delicately and crisply, with more precision than heft, the men's voices predominating over the women's. As Haman, bass David Thomas performed with a dry and edgy voice but with excellent diction. His rough approach to the lament of the villain laid low, "How art thou fall'n from thy height," was stark and striking, despite a slight tendency to croon. (The oratorio omits the details about Haman's ultimate fate: he and his ten sons were hanged.) Doubling as both Mordecai and the First Israelite, the young tenor Sean Fallen used his light voice tastefully and to good effect. Jennifer Ellis as the Israelite Woman displayed an attractive voice slightly lacking in tonal support. Her aria "Praise the Lord with cheerful noise" featured feather-light accompaniment from the violins and an engaging harp obbligato played by Cheryl Ann Fulton. (The orchestral ritornello shows clear kinship with "For Unto Us a Child Is Born" from the later Messiah.)
The dramatic heart of the oratorio is the scene of Esther's fearful entrance into the King's presence. To come unbidden was punishable by death (a sensible security precaution), and the king's initial outrage is enough to make his wife temporarily faint. She revives during their brief duet "Who calls my parting soul from death," which was magically rendered, with pizzicato strings creating a delightful pins-and-needles effect. The Australian tenor Nils Brown, double cast as both King Ahasuerus and the Second Israelite, achieved clear and articulate phrasing and richly colored tone, with just a hint of constriction on top notes. He brought poignancy and heartfelt ardor to the king's loving aria of reassurance "O beauteous Queen, unclose those eyes." Countertenor Daniel Taylor, in some of the best work I have heard him do, sang the Priest of the Israelites with stirring rhetoric, ample sound, and ringing emphasis. He skillfully shaped the languid phrases of his aria of lament on the threat to the Jewish people, "O Jordan, sacred tide." A jaunty pair of hunting horns (Paul Avril and Larry Ragent) made a rousing contribution to Taylor's aria "Jehovah, crown'd with glory bright," with echoes of the Water Music composed about this same time. In the title role, the talented English soprano Catherine Bott sang with purity and clarity, crisply ornamenting the florid "motto" aria "Flatt'ring tongue, no more I hear thee!"
The oratorio is cast on a smaller scale than Handel's later masterpieces in this form, with short arias, terse choruses, and brief ritornelli, but the extended final chorus of celebration, "The Lord our enemy has slain," is a skillful early testimony to Handel's greatness as a composer of mighty choral works Esther is a work whose historical importance as the first English oratorio earns it frequent mention in music textbooks. American Bach Soloists can be thanked for taking it off the reference shelf and bringing it to life in a praiseworthy performance. (Clifford (Kip) Cranna is Musical Administrator of the San Francisco Opera, Program Advisor for the Carmel Bach Festival, and a frequent lecturer on Music Appreciation.) ©2002 Kip Cranna, all rights reserved |