I’m not aware of any debate in Ottawa concerning the legalization of Toronto’s Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra. To be sure, there is much documented evidence confirming that any experience of this uniquely exhilarating band of players does indeed lead to scoring equally potent stimulants in the form of the intoxicating Tafelmusik Chamber Choir. And I have to admit I’ve tried both as often as possible and am thoroughly hooked. However, there is additional evidence that both groups, and especially when taken together, do have a distinct remedial effect on body and soul -for further proof you can check the often uncontrollable buzz felt by audience members at any Tafelmusik concert. They look happy, they look moved, they look and sound transformed.
My own reaction to Tafelmusik, both Orchestra and Choir, is often to babble incoherently but blissfully at intermission and afterwards. I once ran into violinist Edwin Huizinga at a Tafelmusik gig at Koerner Hall and, although I spend much time trying to be articulate and precise in words, I here ran out of coherence and sense in trying to explain my experience, my ‘high.’ As I struggled to find an apt language, he looked on kindly and said, “I understand.” No doubt he did, for Edwin –lucky fellow- was playing in the orchestra that night and said he felt much the same. But isn’t that the effect of remarkable music –which the Baroque so often is- played and sung remarkably -as the Tafelmusik collective so often do? One goes ethereal, one feels new, one feels ineffably complete. Or in the parlance of sixties drug culture, this is mind-blowing stuff and one gets high!
Take the recent Let Us All Sing! concert to celebrate Tafelmusik Chamber Choir at 35, a thoroughly evocative gig of many mind-expanding moments. It began with Laudate Pueri, a work of the young Handel in Rome, and it pleased and prodded one’s imagination throughout. In “A solis ortu…..” the choir seemed an eternal ocean of endless waves all interwoven in one potentially explosive momentum. In “Quis sicut Dominus Deus…’we experienced a grounding of lower registers which seemed not so much an immovable power as a constant unchanging presence made of inherent changes. Since this choir is one of many subtleties, the distinction is noteworthy. And then there was the soprano’s rounded tonal delicacy in a pairing with the cello, albeit with a text translated as ‘He lifteth the needy out of the dunghill.”
And then the Gloria which celebrated both a collective exuberance and the many delicately assertive groupings in the choir. And always this paradox: the Orchestra’s strings digging in vigorously as if to stay for good and just as easily drifting away with a full-bodied lightness of being. The individual players seemed to urge one another on with their own felt urgency as, meanwhile, we experienced elusive but clearly crystallized highs and deep as cosmos descents in the choir. And the various combinations, say, soprano and cello and oboe that delighted thoroughly and reminded us that the use of continuo establishes a uniquely seductive dimension like no other in music. Okay, I admit it, continuo always turns me on at a Tafelmusik gig.
I certainly was not ready for the progression from a youthful Handel to the gripping and profoundly sorrowful atmosphere conceived by composer Agostino Steffani in his Stabat Mater. This was a creation of interacting sorrows that, from the outset, one realized in the interaction of vocal and instrumental lines. These seemed, at least in my imagination, a spiritual pain throbbing from many sources at one time. Again the choir suggested an unforced power in its delivery of the text’s dramatic narrative, certainly with each section maintaining its distinctly textured presence while surrendering to a collectively sustained anguish. The result was breath-holding stunning as we sensed ourselves above a chasm of deepening despair. We also sensed the choir’s many inherent vocal energies and textures animating an ongoing struggle for salvation of which we were made a part. All this in a realm of scourging and wounds where the body perishes. The balm here was a choir of instinctive clarity in its vocal creation of a metaphysical dimension, one that counters sorrow with an implied –and implicit- beauty of eternal spirit. Even for a non-believer, this was heady stuff.
Not as incongruous as it might seem, however, was the irresistible lightness of lilt in the Chaconne from Amadis by Lully. Orchestra and Choir did not here present music as much, so it seemed, as act as flexible and multi-abled conduits of the baroque repertoire’s playful magic. Here the ethereal was made incarnate, here the ethereal was made fun. The air we breathed felt celebratory and it seemed less full of fanfare than a manifestation of interconnected gladnesses. Dance is not what one does, Lully seemed to say, but rather what one is, and this elation-pill of a choir followed suit, matching both their purpose and delivery to his. “Tout charme ici nos yeux” wrote Lully in this utterly delightful work and his words also well-described this group of singers who charmed nos oreilles for good measure. In this experience of ‘La gloire de l’amour’ one felt the ups and downs of perhaps a series of Truffaut films. It was all playful, pixie-ish, a revelling in love as an essence we live to know. But all was done with poise and a manner of gentle counsel and a style most evocative of the French court.
The text of Rameau’s In Convertendo Dominus is Psalm 126 and immediately we heard a heartfelt yet poised vulnerability firmly present in the tenor Philippe Gagne’s singing. The bass-baritone and soprano duet of Jonathan Woody and Sherezade Panthaki respectively, seemed a yin-yang of the cosmic psyche, albeit while still dance-stepping lightly. And then a bass solo offered the very odd experience of impish string runs chasing one another. But always a sense of proportion prevailed and the trio was indeed sprightly in “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.” Again this most flexible of choirs proved adept at robust intimacy, able to dive into and negotiate the many surprises presented by Rameau. This was a choir adept at potency in small numbers, capable of cosmic rumblings in the basses and cloud-high purity in the sopranos, and an everyman grounding in between.
It’s always a pleasure to encounter the music of Bohemian Jan Dismas Zelenka –thank you, Tafelmusik, for long ago making the introduction- and his Missa Dei Filii certainly elicited some physically expressive moves –dare I say body highs?- in this concert’s audience. No wonder, since Zelenka’s compositional mind can seem like a party in full swing, one where a listener tends to feel simultaneously giggly and profound. This seemed like familiar turf for the choir who, with the orchestra, seemed wired to both Zelenka’s Gloria and to conductor Ivars Taurins, the man with the moves who, in all of this, was the physical embodiment of sound and dynamics. Now he shaped the sound, now he guided it along with a finger, an elbow, a hip, a tilt of the head. I’d been watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers films of late, so I was somewhat prepared for Taurins elegantly doing all directions at once. But I’m never quite ready for the Tafelmusik Orchestra and Choir since, after all, how does one prepare for a high as rich as the one they always share with us? They’re so far out, man!
You can send Happy Birthday 35 vibes to the Tafelmusik Chamber Choir when they appear next with a series of Messiah performance at Koerner Hall from December 14 to 17 and join a Sing Along Messiah with them at Massey Hall on December 18. You might want to appoint a designated driver for the occasion unless, of course, your spirits find themselves soaring home on their own afterwards!