Belfast Philharmonic Choir, UO/Haselböck, Waterfront Hall
There's simply nothing to rival it, at least in terms of popularity. Choirs love singing it, and audiences never tire of listening to it. Handel's Messiahis the oratorio that people choose above all others. It's a Christmas perennial that also makes appearances at almost any other time of the year. And, however unfair its dominance may appear to be, and however many deserving works are being neglected in favour of Messiah, the appetite for it seems in no danger of waning.
Last year I went to three performances in Dublin, the city where Messiahwas first heard in 1742, to see how different the approaches might actually turn out to be. The longest took nearly a half an hour more than the shortest. The one involving the largest number of performers had more than twice as many people on stage as the other two combined. The ratios of choral singers to orchestral players varied, too, and one of the performances involved period instruments.
One of the less obvious things that all three performances had in common was that they were conducted by native English speakers. It's something we almost take for granted when it comes to Messiahsin Ireland. The conductors are overwhelmingly Irish or British or, as in the case of New Zealander Mark Duley, from a far-flung, English-speaking outpost of the British Commonwealth.
There have been exceptions, of course. Brazil's Celso Antunes, best-known for his work as artistic director of the National Chamber Choir from 2002 to 2007, actually made his Irish début in Messiah in 1998. Gerhard Markson conducted Mozart's arrangement of Messiah, in German, for the Mozart celebrations of 2006. And in Belfast the following year, the Austrian conductor and organist Martin Haselböck did a Messiah that made a favourable enough impression for him to be invited back again this year.
I caught the second of two Belfast performances under Haselböck at the Waterfront Hall on Saturday. His approach seemed to set itself against one of the major trends in Messiah performances over recent decades. Messiahs have in general been getting faster and sharper. Keep things brisk and concentrate on cut and thrust, might well be the motivating mottoes.
Haselböck's style was altogether more relaxed. His HallelujahChorus had quite the mildest start I think I've ever heard, and he took the same, softly-softly approach at the beginning of the final amen.
There was splendour, too, when it was needed, and the full-toned start of Worthy is the Lambwas spine-tingling. But Haselböck eschewed completely the excitement that's generated by making his choral singers feel strained. He gave the impression that he was always allowing a degree of headroom, that no one was being forced to the limits of their ability, although it still remained perfectly clear that the sopranos and altos had a technical security that the seriously outnumbered tenors and basses couldn't quite emulate.
The Belfast Philharmonic is a large (100-plus) choir, and was pitted against an Ulster Orchestra with a playing strength of around 30. But one of the outcomes of Haselböck’s gentle manner was to allow both voices and instruments to be heard with perfect clarity. If you don’t all raise your voices, he seemed to be suggesting, then everyone can be heard.
His achievement was to appear laid-back and non-interventionist, almost middle of the road in an old-fashioned way when it came to speeds. Yet the flow was always easy and natural, and there was never the slightest hint of the old-style religiosity that once dogged performances of Handel’s music.
His team of soloists showed their strengths in an opposite balance to the choir. Soprano Laura Parfitt, standing in for the indisposed Claire Meghnagi, was a real weak link, with a poor sense of line that made parts of I know that my redeemer livethcome across with note by note dullness.
Canadian counter-tenor David DQ Lee began with a very uneven But who may abide?, in which the music seem to lie too low for vocal security. He improved later and managed some heart- stopping embellishment at the end of He was despised.
The clear-toned German tenor Tilman Lichdi and the English bass-baritone Christopher Purves were rocks of musical sense who brought expressive immediacy and a sense of communicative personal engagement to their contributions.
And, just for the record, unlike one of last year's Dublin audiences, the one in the Waterfront Hall took to their feet in time-honoured tradition, and stood for the Hallelujahchorus.
