William Christie
Handel’s Theodora
Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge
Berkeley Sacred Music
Richard Hickox
The Berkeley Edition Vol 3
Thus cleansed Theodora sallied forth, but still did not penetrate listeners’ affections. Too sombre and moralistic, perhaps; too many arias in minor keys; not enough ebullient choruses capable of shaking town hall chandeliers. Johannes Sommary’s recording for Vanguard in 1969 seems to have been the first, but competition grew once the complete, unfettered score was published in 1985, and the word “masterpiece” began to spread. We can now choose from five recordings; six including the video of Peter Sellars’s 1996 stage production, revived at Glyndebourne next week.
So which to pick? Last week Erato 0927 43181-2 arrived with a new recording from Les Arts Florissants and the conductor who shaped the first Glyndebourne performances, William Christie. The top-name cast doesn’t disappoint: Sophie Daneman, as Theodora, a clarion soprano of great sensitivity; the Canadian countertenor Daniel Taylor, as the Roman soldier who converts for love of the steadfast heroine, beguiling and smooth as silk.
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If the singing were all at this level, we’d be hanging bunting from lamp-posts. But jubilation must be tempered. Recall Juliette Galstian’s Irene: a hard, often unalluring voice, not always reliable in pitch; or Richard Croft’s Septimus, with his tendency to gobble words in recitatives.
Paul McCreesh’s account on Archiv (469 061-2), by a slim margin the best predecessor, achieves a smoother vocal standard. But then the boot shifts to the other foot. McCreesh’s pacing occasionally seems glib and gliding; Christie brings us closer to the music’s racks, gibbets, sword and fire, to quote the title of an early aria, and the recording gives the instrumental colours a better chance to shine. And then, damn it, the boot moves back: perhaps with the grating laugh attached to one of Nathan Berg’s recitatives as the Roman commander Valens, or some other infelicity. No outright winner, then, in the Theodora contest.
On to more religious music, and a fine Naxos disc of choral pieces chiefly written for the Catholic church by one of the year’s centenary subjects, Lennox Berkeley (Naxos 8.557277). He deliberately made much of this music austere, stripped of velocity and quirks to enable a smooth fit with church rituals. Even so, his elegant fingerprints are clear in harmonies and cadences; and the starkest piece, the five-voice Mass of 1964, emerges as one of the most successful.
The performances come from the Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge, recorded in March a few months before the retirement of Christopher Robinson, their director of music. The choral sound is warm, vigorous and precise; a fearless boy soloist, probably a demon on the rugby pitch, lends a special thrill in the 1980 Magnificat, a rare Berkeley treatment of the Anglican liturgy.
For density of musical pleasure, though, the choral disc is outclassed by the third volume of Chandos’s Berkeley Edition (CHAN 10080) devoted to premiere recordings of pieces by father and son, Lennox and Michael. There’s a fascinating mix of angularity and opulence in Lennox’s Symphony No 4, his last. The middle movement, a slow movement and scherzo sliced together in variation form, is particularly memorable.
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The rest of the disc, superbly played by Richard Hickox and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, rests in Michael’s hands. His language is more abrasive, but you still sense Lennox’s lyric presence and English reserve. Except perhaps in The Garden of Earthly Delights — an unusually flamboyant piece, written in 1998 for the National Youth Orchestra. The monster rumble you keep hearing is the lion’s roar (a drum with an inserted tail, just begging to be pulled): par for the course in a work inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych.
A century ago this vivid journey from Eden to Hell might have been called a symphonic poem; whatever the label, it is a work well worth getting to know. Michael Berkeley’s 1985 Cello Concerto — compact, engaging, with Alban Gerhardt the expressive soloist — concludes this rewarding release.