L'Allegro: Apt music for troubled times

By Richard Storm
For The Register-Guard

By cruel coincidence, the Oregon Bach Festival's presentation of George Frideric Handel's masterful L'Allegro, il Penseroso, ed il Moderato became a celebration of British culture on the very day London was menaced by terrorists, not far from the theater in which the hybrid opera-oratorio made its debut in 1740.

Had this concert been planned for that purpose, it would have been hard to choose music and poetry more powerfully suited to the occasion.

By setting verses from John Milton's twin poems about the mirthful and the thoughtful aspects of life - and by adding a third section praising moderation in all things - Handel examined the underpinnings of our civilization in astonishing detail, using his limitless musical skills to paint pictures in sound of everything from walking in the moonlight to the hum of the busy city; from the sound of the curfew watchman to the stately gait of the nun; from the pomp and pageantry of the theater to the appeal of the ``honeyed thigh.''

What is celebrated in this unjustly neglected work is life itself - life in all its messy complexity, joy and sorrow; life expressed in the harmony of nature and art; life examined and balanced between the extremes of both hedonism and piety. Does all of this sound like the ideological battle surging around the world today?

When Handel sets verses such as "And rising reason puts to flight / The fumes that did the mind involve, / Restoring intellectual day," cautioning his audience that we should neither indulge in "revels night and day; / Or else like lifeless statues seeming, / Ever musing, moping, dreaming" he does so with ingenious strokes that elicited murmurs of thoughtful laughter throughout the rapt audience.

Similarly, the rich darkness of the orchestral tone in the opening recitative, "Hence, loathed melancholy," followed immediately by the brilliant colors of "Hence, vain deluding joys" set up the philosophical debate with deft skill and theatrical humor. The aria, "Sweet bird ... most musical, most melancholy" provides the composer an opportunity to explore all the immensely pleasing possibilities of an extended duet between the soprano (Christine Brandes, in full command of her bright and accurate coloratura) and flute (Adam Kuenzel).

Later, tenor James Taylor's plea, "Mirth, admit me of thy crew!" is filled with sung laughter, the dazzling virtuosity of Guy Few's hunting horn obbligato, and the lithe and focused chorus, joined by Gordon Rencher and Tim Cogswell on the glockenspiel, as they sing out their praise of "play / On a sunshine holiday" to the sound of "merry bells."

In the second part, this debate resumed with superb, often moving, arias and duets by soprano (Donna Brown), counter-tenor (Matthew White) and baritone (Russell Braun), in which the orchestra was joined by Few and Andrew Ulyate, trumpets, and the extraordinary cellist, Tanya Tomkins, whose playing in the continuo group with harpsichordist-organist Boris Kleiner was close to miraculous.

John Nelson's expressive conducting drew clean, straight tone from both chorus and orchestra, a sound invariably in perfect tune, in the dead center of the notes, bouncy and solemn in turn, as required. By keeping the tonal palette consistently modest in volume, except when celebratory peals of sound were called for, he focused audience attention on the words and music in an exemplary way.

Seldom has such a large audience been so attentive, even when the less exciting expressions of the virtues of moderation were predominant in the final portion. Let's face it: moderation is not as interesting as excess. However, when Handel sets about to clear our minds of the "fumes" of exaggerated dependence on either mindless mirth or senseless gloom, he does it with flair and convincing skill, providing just the life-affirming convictions about our great civilization we must treasure now more than ever.

Richard Storm is a classical music reviewer for the Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune.