‘Saul’ is one of Handel’s greatest and most – loved
works, containing some of his most moving and uplifting music and subtle
characterization. Since ‘Seen and Heard’ were not provided with a Press
ticket for the performance (the Scholl effect. Ed), one assumes that
there won’t be any desperate anxiety to read what we have to say, but
it’s interesting that the last concert for which it was not possible
to give me a Press ticket was also by this group, at the Lincoln Centre
in New York in August – on that occasion, I was almost glad that I had
had to get my own seat, since it removed from me the obligation to review
a performance of ‘Esther’ of such stultifying tedium that I had great
difficulty in staying awake. That this ‘Saul’ was not at that level
of dreariness was mainly due to the presence of Andreas Scholl as David.
As for much of the rest, I could not possibly sum it up better than
an acquaintance who accosted me at the interval; ‘What do I think of
it? Put a rocket up the conductor’s backside, and shoot the tenor, that’s
what.’
Of course, if you put five Early Music devotees in
a room and throw a few bits of Handel at them, they will happily scrap
for hours on end about tempi, tempi and…er…tempi. Some love ‘em slow,
some love ‘em fast, and this performance must have been just Heaven
for those who like the former; indeed, one musical friend said afterwards
‘I do like the relaxed pace.’ Well, I don’t, and this pace was so relaxed
as to stray into the comatose. The opening Symphony did not lack drive,
and harboured some hopes during parts of it, but it kept slipping back
into the turgid. McCreesh directed playing of reasonable accuracy but
with some waywardness of ensemble at times, and the overall level of
the performance was not always raised by the chorus, who sometimes took
me back to the sort of well-meaning but raggedy singing in which I used
to participate as a student.
The solo parts were taken with varying degrees of vocal
beauty, although it must be said that all of them gave full weight to
the dramatic import of their roles. Susan Gritton brought out all Merab’s
haughtiness in her demeanour and her singing was fluent and expressive,
although it has to be said that hers is not really a Handel voice, and
some of her faster passages were rather smudged. Nancy Argenta’s certainly
is a Handel voice, and she gave a touchingly affecting portrayal of
Micah, despite some understandable tentativeness – she was replacing
Deborah York at short notice. Saul himself was sung by Neal Davies who
blustered convincingly as the fallible king, producing some elegant
singing in his short arias, and the small but significant part of Samuel
was impressively taken by Jonathan Arnold.
The part of the faithful Jonathan was sung by Mark
Padmore, the tenor second only to Ian Bostridge in ubiquity; an aside,
but there was an interview with Mr. Padmore in last week’s ‘Telegraph’
which I found extraordinary for its grandiose title ‘The Great Communicator’
and for the way in which this very well booked and recorded tenor appears
to think that he is somehow under – rated! Padmore has a good solid
tenor voice, and he declaims the dramatic parts with some fervour, but
his tone is, to say the least, unbeautiful, he seems entirely lacking
in the requisite tenderness, and he never moves you as you should be
moved in, say, ‘But sooner Jordan’s Stream,’ nor does he excite you
with any brilliant passagework at such moments as ‘From Virtue let my
Friendship rise’ and ‘Darling of my Soul.’ Maybe he was having an off
night.
And so to the reason why most of the audience were
there – Andreas Scholl’s David. I have said before that this is one
of the great voices of our time, and this performance simply confirmed
yet again his stature as the King of Countertenors (yes, yes, I know
David Daniels is wonderful, too, so please don’t bother to bombard me
with messages about him) The minute he began ‘O King, your Favours with
Delight’ it was as though we were in a different world: this was singing
of quite another order from the everyday, in which the phrasing is so
perfect that it is impossible to imagine it being done otherwise, the
tone so liquid and burnished and redolent of so much immersion in the
spirit of the music that you cannot help but become rapt in contemplation
of hearing such utter perfection. Aria after aria, recitative one after
the other, was presented with the most blazing commitment, and the audience’s
absorption in his characterization was at a rare level of intensity.
It was a great pity that McCreesh had decided upon
such a slow speed for ‘Such haughty Beauties,’ since this kind of showpiece
aria reveal Scholl at his best, but one could hardly help imagining
what he could have done with it if it had been taken at the sort of
speed at which Derek Lee Ragin sings it on the classic recording, or
indeed as Scholl himself performs it under Harnoncourt; in the latter
recording, he is enabled to produce some really dazzling passagework,
but McCreesh’s tempo obliged him to break up the lines, to no good effect
as far as I could tell.
The highlights of the evening were the exquisite duet
‘O Lovely Maid!’ in which Scholl and Argenta blended in such an affecting
way, Scholl’s ‘O Lord, whose mercies numberless’ which was absolute
perfection, and ‘Your Words, O King’ which was sung with real fire and
bitingly exact diction. There are very few musical pleasures greater
than that of hearing a truly remarkable voice in a role for which it
was made, and that was what we experienced on this evening; those wonderful
lines ‘What language can my Grief express? Great was the Pleasure I
enjoy’d in thee, And more than Woman’s Love thy wondrous Love to me!’
can seldom have been more exquisitely sung, and it was only a pity that
their wondrous singer was not surrounded by equally remarkable colleagues
– but perhaps that would be asking for the impossible.
Melanie Eskenazi
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