Anna Carol Dudley

Advent has begun; Christmas is coming. And choruses are singing the Messiah. Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra’s performance was a triumph and the chorus and orchestra sang and played as one instrument.

Bach’s great Passion According to Saint John was given eloquent voice by the California Bach Society Sunday afternoon at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley. The Passion — the story of the end of Jesus’ life — is operatic, in the sense of combining narrative and commentary.

Ian Bostridge is a master singer of German lieder, and he brought Schubert’s Winterreise to UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall Sunday afternoon, splendidly partnered by pianist Julius Drake. Experiencing Schubert’s intimate, searing song cycle would be more satisfying in the intimacy of Hertz Hall, where we last heard Bostridge. But, being smaller, Hertz holds fewer people, so what is Cal Performances to do?

Magnificat’s dazzling singers have done it again. As part of their ongoing project to perform and record the complete works of Chiara Margarita Cozzolani, four singers brought her glorious music vividly to life in a performance Saturday at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley. The four women sang music that Cozzolani wrote for the famous singing nuns in her convent, Santa Radegonda, in 17th-century Milan.

Michael Schade makes a strong case for singing nothing but Franz Schubert, as he did Sunday afternoon in Berkeley’s Hertz Hall, presented by Cal Performances. The German-born Canadian tenor combines his fluency in Schubert’s language with Mozart’s Italian sensibilities. His singing flows effortlessly from ringing, heroic declamation to exceedingly soft, intimate passages.

Folks who showed up at Berkeley’s Music Sources Sunday evening, expecting to be transported to the Dorset Garden Theatre in 17th-century London, found that the Theatre’s advertised program had undergone some changes. Since a couple of key players in the Galileo Project had transported themselves back to Estonia, said Project had withdrawn from the program.

Kurt Weill and several of his cabaret contemporaries from the “Roaring Twenties” in Berlin roared into the Martin Meyer Sanctuary at Temple Emanu-El Sunday afternoon.

Heinrich Schütz suggested that his Musikalische Exequien could be a substitute for a German mass. Warren Stewart has taken him at his word, incorporating the work into a full-length church service. Stewart’s Magnificat, complete with two organs, a continuo group, and eight singers (including a preacher and a deacon), performed the mass Saturday night at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley. The so-called audience served as congregation, joining in on some verses of the chorales.