Tag Archives: Helen Charlston

SCO / Luks

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City Halls, Glasgow

If there are different formats in which Handel’s Messiah works for concert-goers, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio is much less adaptable, which may explain why there are fewer opportunities to hear it.

With Czech Baroque specialist Vaclav Luks in charge, this was a performance not to miss. The key ingredient was the SCO Chorus, again proving itself in another league from the choirs associated with most orchestras. Chorus director Gregory Batsleer had prepared a perfectly balanced unit with as many men as women, equal numbers of singers in each section, and enough young recruits to guarantee a freshness in the sound alongside the wisdom of the voices of experience.

Luks had clearly thought carefully about how to present this priceless asset, arraying them close behind the instrumentalists, and arranging the players in a way that was as singularly effective. Immediately in front of him were the harpsichord and chamber organ, the latter a notably sweet-toned instrument played by Michael Bawtree. With most of the strings on the conductor’s left, only the cellos and basses were on the right hand half of the stage, with all the winds and brass in front of them.

Of the vocal soloists, only tenor Robin Tritschler, in the narrative role of the Evangelist, remained at the centre of the platform, with the other three seated in the wings between their contributions. All of this helped the narrative of the music, while asking the instrumental soloists to stand in their places when partnering the singers was also an important contribution to the story.

After the introductory chorus, with the pure-toned sopranos making an immediate impression, Tritschler led the drama. His delivery was matched by the animation of bass-baritone Florian Stortz, making his SCO debut, and soprano soloist Julia Doyle. Mezzo Helen Charlston, singing the role of the Virgin Mary, was a more sedate presence as suited her arias of lullaby and contemplation.

This concert presented the first three cantatas of the six in the full oratorio (shepherds and angels, but no magi), and was full of memorable moments: the chorus sopranos joining Stortz, the continuo and reeds in Cantata 1, Tritschler duetting with first flute Andre Cebrian in Cantata 2, and Cantata 3’s duet of Doyle and Stortz and a trio of winds among them.

Luks made every detail crystal clear, while the SCO Chorus continued its magnificent form. Cantata 2’s brief unaccompanied Chorale, Schaut hin, dort liegt im finstern Stall, was quite exquisite, their German diction was immaculate throughout, and there was always a clear tonal distinction between the brisk Choruses and more measured Chorales.

Keith Bruce

Portrait of Julia Doyle by Louise O’Dwyer

Dunedin Consort: Leipzig 300

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Perth Concert Hall

During his pre-concert remarks, Dunedin Consort director John Butt implied that this early 2024 recreation of what Johann Sebastian Bach was composing exactly 300 years ago in Leipzig may be the beginning of a longer exploration of his cycles of weekly-composed cantatas. If so, the first one was perhaps undersold as an excellent start to the project, bringing together the University of Glasgow professor’s universally-admired scholarship, a quartet of fine singers and an expanding ensemble of versatile instrumentalists.

As is well known, Bach was third choice for the Leipzig composer and choirmaster job, and Butt presented three of his cantatas performed at the start of 1724 alongside works by the other two, Christoph Graupner’s eight-movement Ouverture in E flat major preceding Telemann’s Viola Concerto in G, with Telemann’s setting of a German paraphrase of Psalm 100 between two of the Bachs in the second half.

Of the singers, bass Matthew Brook had the best of the night, with the Telemann cantata, a “voice of God” aria accompanied by oboes d’amore in Bach’s Jeus schlaft, was soll ich hoffen (BWV 81), the opening Recitative in Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee von Himmel fallt (BWV 18), and the opening Aria of Leightgesinnte Flattergeister (BWV 181), which he attacked with articulate verve. (If there was some numerological significance to the coincident recurrence of the digits in the catalogue numbers, Professor Butt was silent on that point.)

The other voices – soprano Julia Doyle, mezzo Helen Charlston, and tenor Nicholas Mulroy – each had their own solo high spots, including Doyle’s aria Mein Seelenschatz ist Gottes Wort, Charlston’s Wohl mir, mein Jesus spricht ein Wort and Mulroy’s Der schadlichen Dornen unendliche Zahl, where his duet partner was leader Huw Daniel’s expressive violin.

The four also combined expertly in the chorales, led by Doyle, and the tempi Butt found for those were always revealing – rarely do the chorus hymns sound so much part of the shape of the cantatas as they did here.

That rhythmic assurance was just as impressive among the instrumentalists, from the opening Graupner suite with its pizzicato passage and finale full of changes of pace, through violist John Crockatt’s solo turn on the Telemann concerto, to the superb continuo playing in the closing Bach, cellist Jonathan Manson on crisp, precise form as usual.

As well as playing the oboes, Oonagh Lee and Frances Norbury provided the recorders Bach added to the score of BWV18 for its Leipzig outing, where second violins Anna Curzon and Emilia Benjamin switched to violas, the only cantata Bach wrote requiring four of them, and no fiddles.

With the natural trumpet of Paul Sharp joining the ensemble later, the sonic palette was constantly finding new colours in a programme that showed exactly how music was developing three centuries ago. As is the practice of this ensemble, that lesson was always as entertaining as it was educational.

Keith Bruce

Picture: Julia Doyle by Louise O’Dwyer

SCO / Egarr

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SCO / Egarr

Usher Hall, Edinburgh

When the SCO Chorus last sang Handel’s Israel in Egypt in Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall, under Dutch conductor Peter Dijkstra, it seemed to me that the work, with its six soloists, full brass and chamber organ, was too big for the venue. While it was a surprise to find that was six years ago to the week – the Covid-era prohibition on choral singing has confused recollection of concerts past – that impression was confirmed by Richard Egarr’s dynamic direction, from the harpsichord, of the oratorio in the Usher Hall on Thursday evening.

There are some odd things about Israel in Egypt, one of the composer’s earliest excursions into Bible story-telling for the concert platform. Even in an age when recreation of original performance scores has become the thing, Part 1 is still usually consigned to the dustbin of history and we hear Handel’s revised version of Parts 2 and 3 with his addition of some arias for the soloists.

Those six voices – a stellar line-up of sopranos Rowan Pierce and Mary Bevan, mezzo Helen Charlston, tenor James Gilchrist and basses Ashley Riches and Peter Harvey here – are still far from overworked. Handel chose texts from Exodus and Psalms to tell the story of God’s chosen people, and the chorus therefore has the most to sing.

The SCO choir, refreshed by a good number of younger voices, did a superb job across all its sections, without a weak link in voice pitch, and crisp and clear through the entire evening. Egarr treated all the musicians on the Usher Hall stage equally, and the ensemble sound the collective made was superb, quite startlingly so in the combination of singing and instrumental playing in the hailstones of the plagues in Part 2.

From Gilchrist and Charleston’s almost “Once upon a time” storytelling approach to the opening, this Israel in Egypt was a captivating yarn. In Part 3, after the interval, the other soloists took their brief slots in the spotlight with style, Bevan and Pierce combining beautifully in duet only to be ungallantly upstaged by Harvey and Riches with a belligerent, duelling “The Lord is a man of war” that provoked its own ripple of applause.

Not for the first time at Scottish Chamber Orchestra concert, the final credit has to go Richard Egarr for bringing all of the elements together into a wonderful coherence. He was alive to all the contrasts in the score, digging into the platform with his fist on “He smote all the first-born” before gently shepherding the chorus and lyrical reed players in the chorus that immediately follows, and leading a trio of string principals from the keyboard in the continuo.

Handel was still experimenting when he wrote Israel in Egypt, with the triumph of Messiah a few years off, but in this performance, with all its meticulous details and ensemble endeavour, it was very much more than a work-in-progress.

Keith Bruce