Handel’s ‘Messiah’

 City Halls, Glasgow, 28/3/26

City of Glasgow Chorus, City of Glasgow Concert Orchestra, Paul Keohone (conductor), Siân Winstanley (soprano), Charles Humphries (counter-tenor), Christian Schneeberger (tenor), Daniel Barrett (bass)

The night of Saturday 28th March brought The City of Glasgow Chorus and the City of Glasgow Concert Orchestra back to Glasgow’s City Halls, with 4 vocal soloists, under the direction of Paul Keohone, in a performance of Handel’s great oratorio, ‘The Messiah’.  The soloists comprised: Welsh soprano (also a vocal coach, vocal rehabilitation therapist, and Musical Director of the Helensburgh Dorian Choir) Siân Winstanley, English counter-tenor (and Director of Baroque Music at the Stamford International Music Festival) Charles Humphries, Glasgow-born tenor (also prizewinning RCS graduate and Scottish Opera chorus member) Christian Schneeberger, and fellow-Glaswegian, baritone (and Scottish Opera Emerging Artist) Daniel Barrett (stunning in the SO comedy double bill last year as muleteer Ramiro in ‘L’heure espagnole’ and Grigory Stepanovich Smirnov in ‘The Bear’).  The orchestra comprised a selection of musicians from the professional Scottish orchestras, as well as some prominent freelancers.  The attendance was entirely satisfactory.

The instrumentation comprised strings (with two double-basses for added grunt), pairs of oboes and bassoons, a harpsichord continuo, a pair of trumpets, and timpani.  The oboes, for the most part, doubled the two treble string lines in the choral numbers; the bassoons doubling the bass, but also adding bass colour in some solos.  My regular readers will know how much I prize the pared-back (but hugely expressive) sound of the Dunedin Consort in the ‘Messiah’, but I must admit that those reeds contributed to a fabulous ensemble sound in the choruses, enhancing clarity and precision without a trace of muddiness.  Optimal without going full tonto with the bonkers Mozart edition (with flutes, clarinets, horns and trombones, for Heaven’s sake).  The trumpets stayed out of sight until ‘Glory to God’, when they added sweet brilliance, appearing at the edge of the unoccupied choir balcony (the 70+ chorus were on tiered bleachers at the back of the stage).  They returned for ‘Let us break their bonds asunder’, the ‘Hallelujah!’ chorus (of course) and the final ‘Worthy is the Lamb’ sequence.  The trumpet solo in ‘The trumpet shall sound’ was delicious.  Apart from a single violin anticipating an upbeat for the final phrase of a chorus (“these things happen in the best-regulated of families”, my mother used to say), the instrumental playing was excellent and frequently prompted goosebumps.

From the first words of ‘And the Glory of the Lord’, it was clear that the choir were relishing the chance to perform the ‘Messiah’, and that shared joy radiated from each section and was reflected in the sound.  Clarity of diction was excellent, as were the agility and precision in the faster and more ornamented choruses, such as ‘And He shall purify’, ‘All We, Like Sheep’, and ‘Let us break their bonds asunder’.  ‘His yoke is easy’ [my father told me he had once seen the words “but this yoke ain’t” pencilled under the heading on a choral tenor’s score] was flawlessly crisp and fresh, no mean feat for some of the trickiest contrapuntal singing in existence.  All the big choruses were thrilling and dramatic: ‘Glory to God in the Highest’, ‘Lift Up Your Heads’, ‘Hallelujah!’ and, of course, ‘Worthy is the Lamb’ and the final ‘Amen’.  ‘Behold the Lamb of God’, which opens the second part, was fabulously chilling, as were the male voices in ‘He trusted in God, that He would deliver Him’.  The biggest choral goosebumps were delivered by ‘For unto us …’.  “Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace”.  Excellent.

Two years ago I heard Sian Winstanley with the same choir in Vivaldi’s ‘Gloria’, and still recall the crystal clarity and sweetness of her ‘Domine Deus’, with exquisite shaping of both phrase and note, so I had high expectations.  They were not confounded.   The joy and wonder of the narrative of the angelic host appearing to the shepherds, between the Pastoral Symphony and the chorus ‘Glory to God …’ were tangible and compelling, the work of a consummate storyteller and communicator.   The exuberance of the aria ‘Rejoice greatly’ with its more sober central promise ‘He shall speak peace’ was delicious.  ‘How beautiful are the feet of  him’ carried the same delight, while ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’ conveyed a persuasive certainty.  The messa-di-voce shaping of the long notes in ‘If God be with us’ was peerless.  Superb.

This was a first hearing for me of counter-tenor Charles Humphries and also of a live performance of the ‘Messiah’ with a counter-tenor in the alto line.  I confess that I harboured misgivings about the change of tessitura and I will explain them and why I felt that they were vindicated.  But first, I must stress that Charles Humphries is in possession of a beautiful vocal instrument and that his performance delivered moments of great loveliness (for example, in ‘O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion’).  Further, there is a wealth of repertoire for which the counter-tenor Fach is perfect.  I also accept that, when I say that Handel’s ‘Messiah’ is not within that repertoire, I am making a statement of subjective and personal taste.  But that is my view and I will explain it.  Handel wrote the alto part for Susannah Cibber, a contralto with a phenomenal tonal and dynamic range, and the part visits her entire range, from the floor of the alto tessitura to the ceiling of the mezzo.  In December 2022, I heard the fabulous Helen Charlston with the Dunedin Consort deliver a performance of “extraordinary artistic maturity and intense expressivity, with richness of tone and dynamic range, great clarity of diction with consonants to die for, and an unforgettable commanding stage presence”.  It would be unreasonable indeed to expect that to be replicated by a counter-tenor, but that is precisely my point. The tonal range of the line forced transitions between head and chest voices, always accompanied by changes of timbre and dynamic, which harmed the phrasing and challenged the intonation.   Handel entrusts some of the most dramatic and revelatory text to the alto line, none more so than ‘He was despised and rejected of men’.  Where Helen’s “rejected” had carried a dramatic sense of reproachful outrage, Charles’ was more a sense of a “dreadful pity”, to be accompanied by the wringing of hands and the clutching of pearls.  Handel’s exquisitely crafted gutsy alto line deserves better.

I first saw tenor Christian Schneeberger as a soloist a year ago in Puccini’s 1880 Messa, as part of the Garleton Singers’ Spring Concert in Haddington, shining in ‘Et incarnatus est’.  The tenor gets to set the ball rolling after the austere introductory Sinfony, with a mood of hope, in ‘Comfort Ye, My People’, followed by ‘Ev’ry valley shall be exalted’.  From the start, Christian displayed gloriously warm tone with richly expressive phrasing, and gave me the happy opportunity to reuse the accolade “great clarity of diction with consonants to die for”.  And special brownie-points for pronouncing “Jerusalem” as “Yerusalem” (dissenters, please consider your pronunciation of “hallelujah” before tackling me on this).  ‘All they that see Him laugh Him to scorn’ dramatised the indignity in cahoots with the violins, making the text visible.  The extended sequence beginning with ‘Thy rebuke hath broken His heart’ and continuing until the chorus ‘Lift up your heads’ is, let’s face it, a massive guilt trip on humanity for the suffering meted out to the Lamb of God, and Christian laid it on pretty thickly, with a liberal helping of drama and pathos in equal measure, exactly what Handel ordered.  Superbly chilling.  The Part Two melodrama in ‘Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron’ was equally graphic.  The duet with the ‘alto’ in Part Three, ‘O Death, where is thy sting?’, had been (mercifully) cut. 

Seeing Daniel Barrett’s name on the flyers as the bass line whetted my appetite and I was not disappointed.  His baritone delivered rich, refined controlled lyricism rather than raw bass power, a trade-off with which I was entirely happy, whilst admitting that “I will shake the Heavens and the Earth” in ‘Thus saith the Lord of Hosts’ was less seismic than I have heard.  Not that he lacks dynamic range.  ‘The people that walked in darkness’ was radiant and colourful, ‘Why do the nations so furiously rage together?’ was graphically dramatic, and ‘The trumpet shall sound’ was as compelling as I have heard.  Daniel’s blending with the instruments, agility and elegance of ornamentation, and clarity of the melodic line and the diction were second to none.  A committed and generous performance that prioritised connection and communication.

Setting aside the disappointment with the alto line, this was a ‘Messiah’ that had the audience humming, whistling and singing as they dispersed.  And a wealth of happy earworms for this reviewer.