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[Live & On Record]

Noël, Noël
William Christie’s lovely Christmas present

I once heard that Alfred Hitchcock’s wily Christmas card consisted entirely of 25 letters of the alphabet: ABCDEFGHIJKMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ. There was no L ("No el"). This popped into my mind at William Christie’s heavenly concert, with Les Arts Florissants, of Christmas music by the 17th-century French composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier, which was presented jointly by the FleetBoston Celebrity Series and the Boston Early Music Festival at Boston’s historic Church of the Immaculate Conception. Charpentier’s works are numbered with a preceding H (two of the works played on this program, In nativitatem Domini and the Messe de minuit pour Noël, are H.416 and H.9). The H refers to the American musicologist who numbered them, H. Wylie Hitchcock. And these pieces are full of Noëls.

Charpentier is one of Christie’s favorite composers. Les Arts Florissants is named after another Charpentier opera, and when the group were last in Boston, in February, half of the double bill was an inventively staged short opera by Charpentier. But even in this program of non-staged sacred music, there was still an element of dramaturgy. In nativitatem Domini — Charpentier’s Christmas Oratorio — begins with a solo lament by one of the basses (the vocal soloists weren’t identified individually). The "Chorus of the Righteous" follows, with the singers quietly, passively seated. But on the plea "Veni" ("Come down from on high and deliver us"), they made their demand by suddenly leaping to their collective feet. For an instrumental interlude depicting "Night," one of the tenors got up and moved back to the orchestra, from which position he struck the chimes of midnight. At one point, the surrounding city even filled the long silence Charpentier asks for after the "Chorus of the Righteous" with the distant underground rumble of the T (Orange Line?).

In the Gloria of the Mass, the chorus sang the slow "et in terra pax" with their hands covering their mouths; then on "Laudamus te. Benedicimus te," they jumped up and sang out in celebration. At the beginning of the sublime Agnus Dei, the lights in the church dimmed and the tender, exquisite music glowed in the flickering candles circling the entire nave.

Such gestures were not gratuitous. Even at its most lyrical, Charpentier’s music is full of dramatic contrasts and surprising transitions. "O Adonai," tenors and basses sing in the second of the seven "O" Antiphons that began the program — a cappella, pianissimo. The next line finds them practically shouting "et Dux domus Israel" ("and leader of the house of Israel"). This God is both a still small voice and a mighty power. After the hushed music of "Night" comes the rousing and rambunctious awakening of shepherds. There are numerous solemnities (like "Et incarnatus est") and a couple of austere plainchant incantations in the Mass; there’s a sense of wonder and awe in the Oratorio. But the Kyrie eleison is uninhibitedly joyous. There are jolly shepherd dances, plus a march in which "distant" oboes and flutes become louder and louder as they "approach." How beautifully Christie and the musicians controlled the dynamics.

In accordance with Charpentier’s practice, these Christmas pieces were interspersed with contemporaneous "Noëls," which were among the most enchanting passages. The one encore was a Berceuse from a Christmas "pastorale" by Charpentier, a lullaby that repeated one of the loveliest themes in the Agnus Dei. Three soloists sang a verse each, alternating with the chorus. In the final section, the superb continuo players (Jonathan Cable, gamba; Paul Carlioz, cello; Philippe Miqueu, bassoon; Bertrand Cuiller, organ) played as close to silence as possible, and the chorus sang barely above a heartstopping whisper.

A relative of some friends of mine recently arrived from Iran. He had never been out of his country before. He had never heard Western classical music of any kind. This was his first concert in America. I didn’t speak to him directly, but my friends told me that he said that though he wasn’t sure how to understand this music, it made the hairs on his arms stand up. I suspect he wasn’t the only person in the audience who had that experience.

THE RETURN VISIT to the BSO of former assistant conductor Robert Spano was so mired in the controversy over the cancellation of John Adams’s choruses from his opera The Death of Klinghoffer, I was afraid I might find it hard to be objective about the concert itself. Since the opera deals with the murder by Palestinian terrorists of an American Jewish invalid, Leon Klinghoffer, on the cruise ship Achille Lauro, and since one of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus members lost her husband on Flight 11, Spano and the BSO management felt that it was insensitive to perform these choruses, one of which shows peaceful Palestinians turning into an angry mob.

But the actual concert turned out to be one of the liveliest and most interesting of the BSO season. The substitute work was Aaron Copland’s jazzy Symphony No. 1 (his 1926–1931 reorchestration of his 1924 Organ Symphony, which he composed when he was only 24 at the suggestion of the BSO’s new music director, Serge Koussevitzky). Spano had to be at the top of his form — and he was. He delivered an airtight performance, with dynamics brilliantly gauged for maximum climactic effect. The scoring is colorful, with important parts for alto saxophone, harp, xylophone, and fragrant winds. The Finale — brassy, racing, rhythmically complicated — owes much to Stravinsky’s Sacre du printemps, which was barely in its teens when Copland started working on this symphony. "What’s most likable about Copland," a friend remarked (thinking, I suppose, about such popular scores as Appalachian Spring and Billy the Kid), "isn’t very interesting; and what’s interesting isn’t very likable." I rather agree, yet Spano succeeded in making this piece both interesting and likable.

It didn’t have much connection with the major work on the program, Jean Sibelius’s likewise youthful "symphonic poem" Kullervo — a large-scale choral work with vocal solos based on the Finnish Kalevala (along the lines of Schoenberg’s somewhat later but also hyper-romantic Gurre-lieder). It’s compelling but unwieldy and goes on too long. Sibelius withdrew it after its second performance, in 1892 (when he was 26), and it wasn’t performed again until 1958, the year after his death.

Spano gave it rhythmic impetus and a shapely arc. The Men of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus sang with such narrative vigor, intensity, and solemnity, I regretted the absence of another choral piece on the program. Norwegian soprano Solveig Kringelborn, who’s been singing Mozart and Tchaikovsky at the Met, and Finnish baritone Tommi Hakala (substituting at short notice for the scheduled Peter Mattei) made strong if not exactly indelible BSO debuts. And the orchestra — from shrilling piccolo down to growling brasses — seemed eager to give Spano exactly what he wanted.

BY LLOYD SCHWARTZ

Issue Date: December 20 - 27, 2001

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