San Francisco Classical Voice

The San Francisco Early Music Society's current concert series ended with panache with Musica Pacifica's performance of Italian Baroque music and soprano Ellen Hargis's presentation of four solo cantatas. I caught Sunday afternoon's concert in the Grace Cathedral chapel.

Handel's cantata Un alma innamorata ("A soul in love") showed both Hargis and violinist Elizabeth Blumenstock in top form, masters of coloratura and a beautiful vocal sound, artful and tasteful in ornamentation, alternately wounded, amused, and contented by love. Their lively exchanges on words like "rejoicing" and "laughing," the sly hide-and-seek of the second aria, their secure and expressive execution of Handel's wide intervals, and the fine balance between the voice and the doubling violin in the last aria -- all were a delight to hear. Handel's music is eminently vocal, penetrating in its psychological and musical relation to text, and harmonically exciting.

Hargis sings with a rich and varied sound, a sure command of harmonic and rhythmic structure, and a splendid sense of theater, particularly evident in recitative. It's unusual--and wonderful--to experience a singer of chamber music largely off-book in the recitatives, bringing the narrative to life with face, gesture, and particular coloring and timing of words.

The Early Music Society shows its harpsichord bias in publicity that describes Alessandro Scarlatti as the "father of the more famous one." Generations of singers know only the elder Scarlatti from the Italian songs used in their first voice lessons, not the son, Domenico. A. Scarlatti was delightfully represented by his cantata Quella pace gradita ("That welcome peace"). The cantata, gradually turning from the suffering of love to the pleasure of sylvan solitude and repose, alternating recitatives and arias as usual, is imaginatively orchestrated. An instrumental sinfonia begins it, different obbligato instruments accompany each aria, and occasional instrumental ritornelli bridge sections.

The aria Crudel tiranno amor ("Cruel, tyrannical love") is especially beautiful. First the violin, then the voice sang it exquisitely. The aria Care selve ("Dear woods") featured lovely cello playing by David Morris. Hargis's singing of the recitative Lungi da me tiranno amor ("Away from me, tyrannical love"), with dramatic attention to the text, was particularly moving. Here, as throughout the concert, the continuo playing of cellist Morris and harpsichordist Charles Sherman was exemplary.

Musica Pacifica -- recorder, violin, and continuo -- is a strong, well-balanced ensemble, combining individual virtuosity and stylistic consensus. Alessandro Scarlatti's Concerto VII in D Major featured the excellent recorder playing of Judith Linsenberg, especially in the Largo, set off by paired violins with the addition of Lisa Weiss to the ensemble. Handel, born a generation later, composed his Sonata in B Minor in four individual and contrasting movements: a lovely andante, a well-developed allegro, a largo with a striking change of sound in the solo voice flute accompanied by violin double-stops, and a final, lively allegro.

Vivaldi's cantata All' ombra di sospetto ("From the shadow of suspicion") was a good vehicle for virtuosic display by both Hargis and Linsenberg, and benefited from first-rate continuo support. But it lacks the emotional and musical power of Handel and Scarlatti. I missed the Steffani cantata and the Vivaldi concerto that began the concert. In an encore aria, Hargis and all four players showed that Handel is still a winner.

The Early Music Society began in San Francisco, but it has found a larger audience in Berkeley. It is good to see some of its concerts back in San Francisco, although I am not sure it has found the ideal venue yet. Let us hope that the Society will continue to find and develop its San Francisco audience.

(Anna Carol Dudley is a singer, teacher, member of the faculties of the University of California, Berkeley, and San Francisco State University [lecturer emerita] and director of the San Francisco Early Music Society's Baroque Music Workshop.)

©2000 Anna Carol Dudley, all rights reserved