Handel's Israel in Egypt by the Berkshire Bach Society Reviewed
A Choral Masterpiece D.O.A. at the Mahaiwe Theater in Great Barrington
By: Michael Miller - May 13, 2007
The Berkshire Bach Singers, The Berkshire Bach Ensemble
James Bagwell, conductor
I recommended this concert warmly in a preview, and I must apologize to anyone who attended the Berkshire Bach Society'€™s performance of Handel's Israel in Egypt after reading it. I've heard first-rate professional performances of this great oratorio, and I've heard it with decent church choirs, even without orchestra, only an organ, as Mendelssohn published it. It never even occurred to me that it could be massacred. But, I must eat dust, or, more precisely, like the hosts of Pharaoh, swallow Red Sea mud.
That is very much what this deadly evening felt like, although, if the acoustics had been a little muddier, it might have been more tolerable, but, as it was, the dry, dead acoustics of the Mahaiwe Theater concealed nothing. Every sloppy entrance of orchestra and chorus, the consistently poor intonation of the Berkshire Bach Ensemble strings, which grew worse, or at least more irritating, as...time passed, and the rough soloists were all mercilessly exposed in this arid acoustic. (Once again I see the bed of the Red Sea before me.) For the first time in many years I responded to great music with irritation and boredom, and if I hadn't felt obliged, as a critic, to give it every possible chance, I would have walked out early, like the young couple some rows ahead of me, who, when faced with their third or fourth bout with the soloists in the second act, did just that. For me, lingering only made things worse, although the trumpets and drums in the final chorus made enough noise to evoke some vague cheerfulness, but something far short of the called-for rejoicing in the Lord, who "hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea."
Just what went wrong here? I don't believe that the conductor, James Bagwell, is entirely to blame, although his interpretation came across as fussy and lacking in spirit, especially the festive Handelian spirit we all love. I observed a striking disconnect between the message of his lively, extremely clear stick and the leaden music I heard from singers and orchestra. Still, I heard more evidence of interest in getting Handel's dotted rhythms exactly right than in calling forth the essence of his music. I believe the roots of this misfortune lay in the convergence of a variety of factors which, though not incompetent or essentially misconceived, were each not quite right. The Berkshire Bach Ensemble—a different crew from the group who acquitted themselves so well under Kenneth Cooper in the New Year's Brandenburgs—were weak in ensemble and intonation. The Berkshire Bach Singers, almost doubled from their usual complement, also had trouble keeping together in complex fugal passages, but the first bars of these, the entrances of the various voices, consistently showed extremely thorough preparation, and more often than not, they were models of clarity. The diction of the chorus was also impressively clear in these passages. In general I'm very keen on this sort of clarity, but since it wasn't sustained throughout the movement, and the acoustic offered no bloom whatsoever, it seemed more like a diligent exercise than real music. Bagwell's interpretation may not have been as finicky in concept as it was in execution, but his focus on detail with this enlarged and diluted ensemble only made things worse. Perhaps if he were conducting first-rate musicians in a more generous acoustic it might have come out differently. Unfortunately the whole was far less than the good intentions of the individual parts. Sadly, everybody just seems to have tried too hard.
Whether out of purism or caution—respecting the limitations of the orchestra—the overture usually performed with the two-act version was omitted, and we had very much the feeling of being plunged in medias res, rather starkly so, I thought. The colorful movements in the first part evoking the plagues failed utterly to make their effect. I should, however, mention that the woodwinds played well on the whole, and that Teresa Buchholz, alto, was the best of the soloists, in fact the only soloist who was truly adequate, if somewhat stiff musically.
As happens in our small community, I ran into some friends. During the intermission, one asked me, just what I thought was wrong with the performance, making a gesture as if she were dropping a heavy load. A few weeks ago she had gone to Williamstown Early Music’s Handel Gala, which I unfortunately couldn't attend. She'd been thrilled by it, and, full of enthusiasm for Handel, had started buying a variety of recordings. This evening she seemed upset, as if her Kentucky Derby favorite had just lost the Preakness. (But this is not the time to mention that. Malum absit!) Halfway through the second half of the concert I saw her sitting on the edge of her seat, as eager to bolt for the door as I was. Speaking of the audience, the house was full, according to Chairman of the Board Adrian van Zon, who spoke at the beginning of the evening, congratulating the members of the chorus on their success in selling tickets to friends and family. This meant that at the end of the evening members of the audience were either applauding raucously, very little, or not at all.
Whether basking in the achievements of friend and family or bored and peevish, some members of the audience may have been briefly jolted by the politically incorrect tenor of Handel's libretto, a compilation of direct quotations from the Bible and the Book of Prayer, most likely by Charles Jennens (who also compiled the libretto of Messiah), for example:
The Lord is a man of war: Lord is His name. Pharaoh's chariots and his host hath He cast into the sea; his chosen captains also are drowned in the Red Sea.
(Exodus xv: 3, 4)
In our sanitized if troubled times, when many adherents of various religions are so eager to proclaim the pacifism of their own particular faiths (while others assert the opposite), such a passage may seem obnoxious (in the eighteenth century sense...not to mention the masculine noun attached to the Person of the Godhead). It is instructive to note that at the time of the first performance of Israel in Egypt during Holy Week of 1739 there was great enthusiasm brewing in England for a war against Spain, the result being the War of Jenkins' Ear, which was declared in the autumn of that year. Only a few months before, the sea captain, Robert Jenkins, had been stirring up anti-Spanish fervor in the House of Commons, by displaying his ear, purportedly amputated by the Spanish coast guard, pickled in a jar—in a gesture recalling Colin Powell's farce before the United Nations only a few years ago. The English of this time, particularly (but not only) the supporters of the Hanoverian monarchy and the Church of England, as Ruth Smith as explained in her brilliant Handel's Oratorios and Eighteenth-Century Thought (Cambridge, 1995), were given to identifying themselves with the ancient Israelites. The first reviewers of Israel in Egypt immediately picked up on this political dimension, one interpreting it patriotically, another as treason (i.e. Jacobite, which is closer to the truth, given Jennens' personal sympathies. Handel, on the other hand, was employed by the Hanoverian court.) Considering the imminence of war with Catholic Spain and the fact that the Forty Five was not far off, these issues of legitimacy and religion surely resonated with early audiences, although, as Smith astutely observes, an oratorio could be interpreted in different ways, like all but the most politically blunt works of art.*
This earnest, unmusical evening evoked memories of the grimmest Baroque performances of many years ago, when people could still remember the taste of cod liver oil, and Bach and Handel were regarded as virtuous medicine. Speaking of antiquity, in my preview I neglected to provide a link to the Edison National Historic Site, where you can hear the historic cylinder recording of the Handel Festival Chorus. You may as well try it now.
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*Considering this, the unfortunate and ill-timed grandstanding of Swarthmore musicologist Michael Marissen in the New York Times of April 8 appears all the more irrelevant, as it was incorrect of him to publish a scholarly argument, particularly one which has been so negatively received by his colleagues, in the popular press before its publication in an academic journal. If you read Smith or other publications you will see that his thesis is even not as original as he would have it appear. In other words, don't worry. Messiah is unlikely to become politically incorrect, and it will even remain acceptable to stand during the "Hallelujah Chorus," or at least let us hope so.