Commemorating Handel at the NY Philharmonic

George Frideric Handel died 250 years ago, and the New York Philharmonic is marking the anniversary with an all-Handel program this week, actually a few weeks prior to the April 14 anniversary date.  They've brought in --- one might say, squandered --- an early music specialist to lead the program, Nicholas McGegan, and engaged soprano Christine Schafer to sing six arias in Italian from Handel's operas, interspersed with instrumental music.  A large ensemble of strings drawn from the regular body of the orchestra -- I counted 9 first violins, 7 seconds, 6 each of violas and cellos and 4 basses in the purely instrumental works -- shows the size involved.  Not really reduced to a chamber ensemble of the type one might expect if they were using early instruments in a smallish space, but I suppose they were concerned to project a large enough sound for Avery Fisher Hall, which I've often remarked has the acoustic properties of an airplane hangar.

At any rate, rarely have I been quite so bored at a Philharmonic concert.  I enjoy Handel's music in moderate doses.  I don't think an entire program is quite the thing, even with the degree of variety presented here.  We had an opening concerto grosso with a big wind body, then three arias from Partenope, then after intermission, another concerto grosso for smaller forces, three more arias (two from Alcina and one from Giulio Cesare), and finally the Royal Fireworks Music with a large wind complement.

The first problem for me was that McGegan did nothing to simulate period practice as far as I could hear.  This sounded to me much like the Handel recordings that Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields were making back in the 1960s.  Big, thick luscious sound, plenty of continuous vibrato in the strings, moderate tempi most of the time with beautifully rounded corners and legato phrasing, etc.  All very beautiful, but all too often lacking in the interesting nuances, sonic hairpins, and rhythmic spring we've come to expect from performances of music of this period by early music ensembles.  And, of course, the modern woodwind and brass instruments just emphasize the big, thick sound even more.

Can one achieve some semblance of period performance with modern instruments and a string body this large?  Yes.  I've heard Norrington accomplish this with the Orchestra of St. Luke's (well, perhaps with a slightly smaller string body, and in Carnegie Hall rather than Avery Fisher, so he didn't have to press so hard to make a big enough sound).  One key element is to get the string players to lay off the continuous vibrato, which is not appropriate for mid-18th century music.  Another is to get them to lighten up their bow action.  No need to dig in quite so ferociously, as the Philharmonic strings are accustomed to doing.  And then the faster movements should be played with a little more forward momentum, and every attempt should be made to get some interesting articulation going in the accompaniments so as not to fall into a monotonous "chugging" sound as things move forward with too comfortable a trotting pace.

Perhaps these performances were intended to evoke nostalgia for the way 18th century music was normally played by symphony orchestras before the early music movement got hold of it during the last quarter of the 20th century....  But there were the same problems that I and others detected with Mr. Maazel's project to do the Brandenburg Concerti of Bach with the Philharmonic during the course of the season.  

This is not to fault the concert I heard tonight on purely technical grounds of ensemble, intonation, etc.  Just to say that the NYP sounded to me like an oversize school of fish out of water, to mix metaphors terribly.  And, given McGegan's credentials -- including lots of Handel recordings with period instruments -- I was rather surprised that he appears not to have made the attempt to reign in the s.o.p. of the NYP strings to try to approach more closely an awareness of period style in the music.  One might as well have had Maazel lead the program...

As for the singing, I enjoyed Christine Schafer's voice, but I was not crazy about the idea of hearing arias out of context like this.  Things might have been more interesting had they engaged another singer or two and presented a complete scene or two...  Another opportunity lost. 

But I shouldn't be complaining too bitterly.  After all, it is unfortunate that the advent of the early music movement has generally led symphony orchestras to retreat from presenting 18th century music from their regular concerts.   Part of the reasoning may just be prudence.  The current fashion is to hear these works played in something closer to our current understanding of period style, and to refrain from imposing on them the conventions of late 19th century romantic orchestra sound that typify our modern orchestras most of the time.  On the other hand, Norrington and others have shown that with a properly-sized ensemble, one can present idiomatic interpretations of 18th century music in the context of a symphony orchestra concert.  It just takes a lot more preparatory work to do it right!