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EARLY MUSIC REVIEW
Judgment of Solomon September 30, 2006
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Masterfully at Home in Another Era By Michelle Dulak Thomson
Ah, another season, another kaleidoscopic tour of the 17th century from the indefatigable Magnificat and its director, Warren Stewart. Many of the Bay Area's early music ensembles dip into these waters on occasion, but no other that I know of spends the year there — certainly none explore it with greater depth and detail. The season-opening set was devoted to Marc-Antoine Charpentier, a recurring mainstay of Stewart's programming and a composer obviously dear to the ensemble. On Saturday night at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley, the dedication and love was palpable.
The program centered on two substantial works from late in Charpentier's career, both written for the grand solemn mass celebrated annually at Saint-Chapelle in Paris to mark the opening of Parlement. The Motet pour une longue offrande from 1698 is a large-scale, vividly variegated work in four sections that moves continually from texture to texture and culminates in an extended, elaborately designed final chorus. Judicium Salomonis (The Judgment of Solomon), from 1702 and apparently Charpentier's last work, recounts the familiar biblical story.
After an opening sequence that depicts the People of Israel rejoicing their new king, comes a dream sequence in which God asks Solomon to name a gift. To God's pleasure, Solomon asks not for riches or triumphs or a long life, but for the wisdom to govern his people well. In consequence he is granted that and the worldly goods he didn't ask for as well. Upon awaking, he is presented with his first task, which is to arbitrate between two women claiming to be the mother of the same baby. Solomon, of course, orders that the child be cut in half, and proclaims the woman who prefers a living infant in another's hands to half a dead one in her own, as the true mother. General rejoicing ensues.
One of the recurring joys of hearing Magnificat is the ease with which the ensemble slips into the stylistic garb of each program. It takes an uncommonly disciplined musical sensibility to range as widely over this bewildering century as these musicians do — and yet they always seem right at home. On Saturday night, the rhetorical tone was just right for Charpentier: poised and serene, perceptibly stylized and yet sincere, unfailingly elegant — but also, rejoicing unabashedly in the richness of the harmony. The performance-practice niceties — the easily swung notes inegales, the lovingly dwelt-upon cadential appoggiaturas, the (to my ears) impeccable French Latin — all seemed as natural as breathing. It is remarkable how full a one-on-a-part consort can sound in a sympathetic acoustic, in particular when the blend and intonation are as good as this, and the ensembles so carefully shaped. The short and exquisite motet Pour le Saint Sacrament au Reposoir (H. 346), which opened the concert, benefited especially from the way Magnificat's singers moved so deftly from solo to consort roles. The opening of the piece is taken by three solo singers in turn, each giving place to one higher, and then the full consort completes the phrase. In Magnificat's hands the upward unfolding was a single breathtaking gesture. Indeed the entire performance, apart from some pesky intonational discrepancies where the flutes and violins were in unison, was worthy of the piece, which is saying something. According to Stewart's program note, it was hearing a performance of this work some 20 years ago that caused him to fall in love with Charpentier. I can well believe it. It is in a vein of simple, unaffected joy and gratitude that Charpentier often mined, but rarely with such quiet intensity as this.
The grander choral sections of the two larger works came off nearly as well, even where you might have expected a larger choir to be more effective. Judicium Salomonis, in particular, has some exceptionally intricate choral work in which the nimbleness and focus of Magnificat's singers more than compensated for any deficit in heft. Occasionally, I could have done with more emphatic enunciation of the text. For example, the rain-of-sulphur-and-brimstone chorus early in the Motet pour une longue offrande presents a particular problem. The violence of the words sits oddly with a setting that is illustrative to be sure, with its cascades of melisma, but to modern ears it seems too jolly for the text. A little more pure venom in the consonants wouldn't have been amiss. But both there and in Judicium Salomonis, the longer stretches of music — in the rapid texture switches among instrumental interludes, solos, small ensembles, and full consort — were controlled with a fine ear to longer-term shaping that gave the grand architecture its due. The solo singing was a little more variable. The sopranos, Catherine Webster and Jennifer Ellis, were fine. They matched in timbre, were pure in intonation (doubling in the choruses, they sounded like a single voice), and unfailingly elegant of line. Bass Peter Becker combined a rock-steady, vibrant tone with an obvious delight in the words. He shined as the Voice of God in Solomon's dream and in the wide-ranging opening arioso of the Motet pour une longue offrande. His Solomon, tenor Daniel Hutchings, was a less vivid personality, stylish and sweet of tone, but not terribly full of character. Paul Elliott, the haute-contre, had a pure and clear sound that blended equally well, whether he was the top voice in a trio of men or as complement to the two sopranos. But he seemed to have vocal difficulties at the top of his range Saturday. He had trouble sustaining an even line, fading in and out of focus, perhaps due to allergies? Nonetheless, his False Mother in Judicium Salomonis was a delightful foil to Webster's clarion true voice, with just a little edge of insincerity. Magnificat's one-on-a-part string band, led as ever by violinist Rob Diggins, played with zest and tenderness as required. (The mysterious, chromatic prelude to Solomon's dream opening the second part of Judicium Salomonis was especially fine.) The flutes (Louise Carslake and Byron Rakitizis, who switched briefly to recorders for one passage in Judicium Salomonis) were likewise stylish, despite the aforementioned intonational queasiness. The remainder of Magnificat's 15th season moves on to other corners of Europe and to Stewart's favorite territory (Buxtehude, Stradella, and Cozzolani). It would have to go some distance to top this.
(Michelle Dulak Thomson is a violinist and violist who has written about music for Strings, Stagebill, Early Music America, and The New York Times.)
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