There seems to be something of a curse blighting London's tenors at the moment; hot on the heels of Domingo's withdrawal from Tamerlano we had both John Tessier and his understudy unable to perform in ENO's Elixir (resulting in a polyglot performance, with guest tenor Edgaras Montvidas singing in Italian while the rest of the cast continued in English), and last night's Handel Festival concert continued in this vein with tenor Simon Wall unable to perform. The result was a speedy shift of repertoire from soprano Lucy Crowe and baritone William Berger, and some overnight note-learning from the orchestra musical pragmatism of which Handel himself would have been proud.
Something of a mixed Handelian programme, the concert balanced an episodic first half of freestanding arias and orchestral movements associated with St Cecilia, with Handel's short secular cantata Apollo e Dafne after the interval. Music and love therefore so the programme notes assured me were the unifying themes of the evening, but a slightly incoherent selection of music (last-minute substitutions notwithstanding) made me wish that there had been a clearer thematic scope or trajectory to hold everything in place.
It was with movements from Alexander's Feast, Acis and Galatea and An Ode For St Cecilia's Day that we opened. Both Crowe and Berger proved themselves a delight in this intimate venue, with Berger in particular extracting every ounce of expressive potential from his arias, and gamely facing down a very proximate audience with all the dramatic conviction he would bring to an opera stage. 'I rage, I melt, I burn!' from Acis was a glorious opener for Berger, allowing him to display a rather impressive and unexpected lower range for a baritone, coupled with a playful diction and evident relish in the text that had many of the audience smiling back at him. 'Revenge, Timotheus cries' followed in a similar vein, but the real delight was the delicately caressed B section in which Berger was accompanied just by lower strings and bassoon (recalling 'Gia l'ebro mio ciglio from Orlando in its texture) creating some lovely dark resonances.
Crowe is rapidly becoming one of the most reliably enjoyable Handelian sopranos, and did not disappoint in either tone or expression. 'The soft complaining flute' from Handel's An Ode for St Cecilia's Day was an exercise in controlled pianissimo singing (assisted by Marta Goncalves as solo flute) and the sequential passages of ornamentation were elegantly articulated. Of particular joy were her da capo sections, which featured some beautifully conceived embellishment.
The orchestral numbers were gallantly tackled by David Bates and his band, and while their security of tone did grow as the evening progressed, I was never quite convinced by the front of their sound, which lacked the raw bite and edge that is so thrilling from groups such as Concerto Koln. It seems no coincidence that this latter ensemble do without a conductor; while competent, at times Bates did feel somewhat incidental, only sporadically making use of the harpsichord from which he was directing. Much of the music they had chosen the overture from Alexander's Feast, a Sinfonia from Acis and Galatea takes dance rhythms as its basic framework, and while these were delicately performed they lacked the clearly pointed swagger that would have brought them fully to life. The Sinfonia in particular, with its cheekily humorous battle of wills between wind and strings, and tongue-in-cheek imitation at dynamic extremes, needed more playful energy, and the wisdom of programming a movement in isolation that ends on an imperfect cadence a fact that Bates himself drew sheepish attention to seems mystifying at best.
Categorised most often as a 'pastoral opera', Apollo e Dafne is a perfectly formed miniature of a work, retelling the legend of the would-be lover and his chaste victim as a dialogue between the two characters. Berger won the audience over from the start with his portrayal of Apollo, capturing the smug arrogance of his character without ever being either smug or arrogant no small feat. His 'Spezza l'arco' was gutsy and swaggering, luxuriating in its pseudo-military sensibility. Crowe's opening aria 'Felicissima' a lilting pastoral number complete with pizzicato strings and solo oboe was a real highlight, showcasing her understated legato tone. It was however marred by some uncomfortable moments from the obbligato oboe (why not use the more conventional flute?) who proved rather wayward of pitch and tight throughout. Another obbligato issue emerged in 'Come rosa' where the glorious and athletic cello line failed to balance up to Berger, becoming lost in the orchestral mix and leaving the harmonies feeling somewhat hollow around it. After a concert of delicate soprano arias, it was a delight in 'Ardi, Adori' to have some of Crowe's not inconsiderable force released, proving that she can do dramatic power as well as sweetness. It was a sound that continued into the duet of exchanges 'Deh, lascia', which was beautifully judged by both Crowe and Berger she maintaining an eye-flashing coldness and he all brooding and pleading.
Unfortunately what was an accomplished and exciting evening of singing was somewhat spoiled by the odd decision for Berger to sing off book while Crowe was very much in hers. This, coupled with splitting the singers across the conductor, creating a barrier to interaction, gave a somewhat uneven and scrappy feeling to proceedings a feeling that characterised a concert that could easily have been so polished.
Photo: Lucy Crowe
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