Media Reviews
Handel's short history of Exodus thrills and chills at Koerner Hall
Ken Winters
The Globe and Mail
October 26, 2009
The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir provided a rich, brisk, often thrilling choral evening in George Frideric Handel's fierce, relatively brief biblical oratorio Israel in Egypt, Saturday night at the Royal Conservatory of Music's classy new Koerner Hall. On this evening, my first experience of the venue and the first choral concert performed in the space, the sound was as acoustically alive and accommodating as has been well-discussed this fall.
Among Handel's oratorios, Israel in Egypt is an odd one. The first part bristles with vivid choruses about the transformation of waters into blood, frogs, flies, lice and other plagues that God inflicts upon the oppressive Egyptian rulers, going on to part the waters of the Red Sea for the deliverance of Moses and the oppressed Israelites, and then to join those waters again to drown the pursuing Egyptians. This story of Exodus is fraught but short, without subplots or deviations, and by the end of Part I, it's really all over but the shouting. Part II is given over to postmortems of praise for the Israelites' ferocious God of vengeance, reprising the glories of His dreadful wrath and blooming with satisfaction over all these glories.
The chorus, representing the people, is the true protagonist here, and Handel, flexing his magisterial choral muscles, has given it magnificent music to demonstrate its centrality. All the stuff about rivers of blood; pestilence covering men and beasts with "blotches and blains"; flies and lice infecting habitations; locusts without number devouring fruit crops; a rain of hailstones mingled with devastating ground fire; and a final descent of a thick, palpable darkness - they inspired Handel's leaping invention and huge resource. But he saved his best strokes for the four major choruses that provide the climax of Part I: the abrupt, powerful He Smote All the First-Born of Egypt; the gorgeously reassuring But as for His People; the grim But the Waters Overwhelmed their Enemies; and the grand, fugal And Israel Saw that Great Work. Conductor Noel Edison, the choir and the Elora Festival Orchestra rose superbly to the challenge of these pieces.
In Part II, only the fabulous opening chorus Moses and the Children of Israel and Sing Ye to the Lord, the final chorus with soprano solo, achieved the same enthralling level. By comparison, with the feast of material Handel gives to the choir, he requires his six soloists to make do with a few brief recitative comments; a grand total of three arias - one of them for alto (countertenor), one for tenor and one for soprano; two duets - one for sopranos, the other for basses; and a couple of solo decorations in the contexts of the choruses.
The drama of Israel in Egypt is limited to plagues on power and the consequent rejoicing of the God-supported victims. Handel delineates these with no recourse to evenhandedness or political correctness. His mastery of choral writing and the ingenuity of his meagre provision for his soloists combine in a score that is unique and refreshing. The Mendelssohn Choir sounded thrilled to be singing it, vigorously spurred on by Edison.
The soloists - most particularly the marvellous, diminutive, vaulting-voiced soprano Suzie LeBlanc, the towering, elegant countertenor David Trudgen and the rapier-keen, clarion-clear bass-baritone Thomas Goerz - could hardly have been better. Handel's requirement of six first-class soloists to make their best of such slim pickings puts them all in the category of cannon hunting quail. But all six performed bravely and stylishly, including second soprano Sheila Dietrich, tenor James McLennan and second bass Neil Aronoff.
The assembled company pulled everything off with splendid aplomb in 1 hour, 35 minutes. Could this short, succinct work really be by the leisurely Handel of all those full-length operas and often time-consuming oratorios? Obviously, it's time we became better acquainted with this epigrammatic achievement of the great man.
