Handel Sing-Along, a new release by Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra on their own label named –what else?- Tafelmusik Media, is a filmed record of an eagerly anticipated annual event at Toronto’s Massey Hall, one that has offered many thousands since 1986 a chance to join in and belt out Handel’s beloved masterwork. First presented on Bravo in December of 2010, this DVD, here filmed at Koerner Hall, is a gem of celebratory and open-hearted music-making and –how else to say it?- a hell of a lot of fun. Soprano Suzie LeBlanc with poignant voice and charming presence, countertenor Daniel Taylor with tones of aching purity, tenor Rufus Mueller and bass-baritone Locky Chung make up an outstanding quartet of soloists who front the invariably memorable Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and Chamber Choir of about two dozen members per group.
During the overture we have clips of musicians in preparation backstage while in the lobby members of the audience enthusiastically declare the number of times they have come to sing along at this annual ritual, the number for some being over two dozen. Since its debut in 1742 in Dublin, Messiah has over time been given the bigger is better treatment in many symphonic performances and here the intention is to return to standards that, on a smaller scale, are “more intimate and more approachable.” And how is this accomplished? Why, of course, through taking one of the world’s great baroque orchestras with none other than Herr Handel himself to conduct.
You see, it seems that the corpulent Handel’s higher power once maneuvered the composer into conducting these sing alongs for all eternity and, happily, we have a post-Pilates Handel embodied here by a thinner choir director Ivars Taurins who both tells the tale and conducts. He is indeed a very funny guy in powdered wig and eighteenth century garb, a man who exudes warmth, wit, joy in the music, and certainly something of the heartbeat of a man who could compose Messiah in about three weeks. On my last two visits to London I dropped in again to the Handel House Museum at 25 Brook Street, and felt a slight shiver as I stood in the room alleged to be the one where Handel did the deed. Such sensation returned on watching this film of music-making at its most joyfully human.
The second DVD release from Tafelmusik is a much celebrated multimedia creation, The Galileo Project, which, in 2009, had its premiere at The Banff Centre in Alberta in celebration of Galileo’s first public demonstration of his telescope. In a nutshell, this production explores “the fusion of arts, science and culture in the 17th and 18th centuries” with Tafelmusik performing “the music by memory to a backdrop of high-definition images from the Hubble telescope and Canadian astronomers.” We hear music by Monteverdi, Bach, Lully, Rameau, Handel, Telemann, Zelenka, Purcell Vivaldi, and Weiss, along with the lesser known Merula, Galilei, Marini, and, yes, the accompanying CD is a baroque treasure as one would expect of Tafelmusik.
The whole project was “programmed and scripted” by double bassist Allison Mackay with actor Shaun Smyth handling performance of intriguing texts that include Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses, a letter written by Galileo in 1629 concerning his appearance before the Venetian Senate, even the Inquisition’s sentence of Galileo, and much else that places the era’s scientific zeitgeist, its human dimension, and its cultural life into the listener’s consciousness. The texts are informative, touching or, as in the tale of Phaeton, quite thrilling, especially when juxtaposed with musical selections that enhance their dramatic content. Indeed, this is a multi-media production that is based, in concept, on a sensitive intelligence and in turn is realized to dazzling and awe-inspiring effect.
There are so many things that please in this ninety minute performance and the interaction of the musicians is one. Right at the outset, we have an assertive downbeat from violinist Jeanne Lamon, the entry by second violinist Julia Wedman who in quick order turns –with an expression of impish sunrise in her eyes- toward the actively benign presence of cellist Christina Mahler whose ensuing gaze at Ms. Lamon sets the latter into a breathtaking frenzy of violin playing in Vivaldi. The interaction of musicians, especially when they are choreographed as celestial bodies by Marshall Pynkoski against radiant or haunting images of the sky, and especially with camera work that plants the viewer among them, is magical.
With the Tafelmusik sound that is perfect as crystal, shining, and majestic, one might be taken aback by the contemporary and youthful voice of actor Shaun Smyth. The readings are intelligently shaped for meaning and echo the emotional variety of the orchestra’s selections certainly, but the voice is not stately or classically resonant as that of a traditional stage actor might be. Very soon, however, one shares through Smyth’s readings a sense of everyday human wonder that is very moving, since we are thus made contemporaries of those who spoke these lines long ago. After all, we are so lucky as a species that when we look skyward at infinity, we find millions of luminous heavenly bodies blocking our view.