THE SIXTEEN
Bridgewater Hall
OF course
there are never actually 16 of them (or hardly ever). The singing strength of
The Sixteen at the Bridgewater Hall on Friday was 18 – and they brought their
orchestra as well, so we had good value for money.
It was a
festival of Handel – mostly music they’ve performed here before, but none the
worse for that. As conductor Harry Christophers has pointed out, Handel was a
master of power through simplicity, as well as complex musical tapestries, and
rarely lost the instinct for drama in his writing, even when it wasn’t for the
stage.
The
orchestra preluded each half of the concert with spritely playing on its own:
The Arrival Of The Queen Of Sheba (from Solomon) first – in which you can
almost hear the jangle of the bling as she approaches – and the sober overture
to the tragic Jephtha.
The Chandos
Anthem no. 11 (Let God Arise) was a new item for Sixteen fans at the
Bridgewater Hall. Its final Alleluia chorus is almost a prototype for the fugal
part of the more famous Hallelujah we all know (and equally jolly); its most
glorious music the central section for solo soprano, Let The Righteous Be Glad,
steered adroitly on its melodious way by Christophers’ beat.
The fourth
of George II’s Coronation anthems, Let Thy Hand Be Strengthened, was a suitable
precursor for the major work of the second part, Dixit Dominus.
It’s an
early cantata from Handel’s Italian years, demanding a lot from any choir and
orchestra, and was splendidly done. Christophers keeps the pulse moving along in
the livelier sections, even when the music seems to gasp in its own moments of
crisis, and he was well aware of the dramatic effects that come in the centre
of the work, the vigour of its counterpoint, the stabbing rhythms that
illustrate the Lord ‘smiting’ the bad guys, and the wonderful pastoral contrast
that accompanies the thought of drinking refreshing water from a stream.
Finally he
built a suitably weighty climax from the ebb and flow of the Gloria Patri.
There was a good house and they went home suitably satisfied.
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