SING MESSIAH!
Celebration Chorus,
Messiah Singers
Esplanade Concert Hall
Sunday (22 December 2013)
This review was published in The Straits Times on 24 December 2013 with title "Sing-along success of Yuletide season".
The performance of Handel’s oratorio Messiah has
been synonymous with the Yuletide season such
that the Christian celebration seems incomplete without it. It had been a
staple of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and its choruses, but the ritual was
taken up this year by the Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra, Celebration
Chorus and Messiah Singers led by charismatic young conductor Adrian Tan (below).
Another difference
was the element of mass audience participation in the spirit of those
sing-along Messiahs so popular in
It helped that
hopefuls were primed weeks before with rehearsals led by Greg Petersen and Tom
Anderson, with the help of downloadable scores. On the day, audience members in
the stalls were armed with choral albums, tablets and iPads to do their part.
Conductor Tan cajoled with good humoured needling and the stage was set.
A complete Messiah
would have taken two and a half hours, so selections of arias and choruses from
all three parts made up a quite digestible 90 minutes for the capacity house.
In the less familiar and more difficult fugal choruses like And He Shall
Purify, the audience was predictably quiet, but it warmed up considerably for
the popular For Unto Us A Child Is Born.
The large chorus
on stage projected strength in numbers even if it does not match the finesse of
the much smaller Singapore Symphony Chorus which has made a habit of performing
from memory. The orchestral accompaniment was more than acceptable even when
perfection in cues and execution could be found wanting at times.
The soloists was
an A-list of Singaporean (no foreign talents here) singers led by soprano Yee
Ee-Ping whose aria Rejoice was an imperious show of coloratura prowess.
Mezzo-soprano Rebecca Chellappah projected gravitas in He Was Despised while
baritone William Lim was rock-like and unshakeable in the dramatic Why Do The
Nations. Tenor Reuben Lai had a pleasant ring to his voice but struggled to hit
the highest notes in Comfort Ye and Ev’ry Valley.
The perennial
question as to whether one should stand for the Hallelujah Chorus was
unequivocally decided by the conductor. Like King George II who did so more
than 270 years ago, there were to be no sitters and the effect was quite
stunning. Not only did the audience erupt in full voice, the visual spectacle
of seeing Esplanaders on their feet was one not easily forgotten.
The ploy was a
canny one, as after the final choruses Worthy Is The Lamb and Amen were
concluded, there was a spontaneous standing ovation. Whether this was
self-congratulatory or not is debatable, but there looks like more D-I-Y
Messiahs to come in the near future.
No comments:
Post a Comment