Music Review
HANDEL AND HAYDN SOCIETY
At Jordan Hall, Thursday.
Repeats Sunday at 3 p.m.
If, on a bone-chilling night, your taste in drinks tends more toward mulled wine than cocoa with whipped cream and marshmallows, the Handel and Haydn Society’s Bach Christmas might be the concert for you. The program featured three Bach cantatas and pieces by Georg Philipp Telemann and Christoph Graupner, two of Bach’s German contemporaries who turned down offers of the prominent Leipzig directorial position at which Bach spent the latter half of his life.
All the soloists were veteran members of the Handel and Haydn chorus. Each one sang in the ranks when not taking a featured turn with the orchestra, which at no time numbered more than 11 onstage, including conductor Ian Watson. The evening had a familial, cozy flavor, from the prelude appearance by the Vocal Arts Program’s Concert Choir to the last Amen.
Like many family gatherings around this time of year, it had a few clashes and stumbles. The 18 voices of the chorus immediately overpowered the instruments beginning the first cantata, “Meine Seel erhebt den Herren,’’ and the chorus’s unmanicured attacks sounded more harsh than euphoric during the rollicking chorus that opens Cantata V from the Christmas Oratorio. However, these small moments were only moments, and the rest was marvelous.
Eric Perry embodied the religious melodrama of the fire-and-brimstone recitatives, with sharp physicality and a ringing tenor voice. Baritone David McFerrin’s voice took on a dusky luster during “Erleucht auch meine finstre Sinnen,’’ and he electrified the wild, ominous “Gewaltige stößt Gott vom Stuhl.’’ Katherine Growdon brought a rich, rippling mezzo-soprano to the chorus and recitative of the Christmas Oratorio, and soprano Jacquelyn Stucker sang an incandescent aria during Graupner’s “Der Nacht ist vergangen’’ cantata. Soprano Sarah Yanovitch, a recent arrival in Boston, is a name to keep an eye on; singing both the first and last arias of the evening, she combined crystalline tone with a stunning, subtle kind of expressive power.
Elisabeth Axtell’s horn only sounded in the Graupner piece, but memorable were her fiery bursts in the vigorous first movement, and martial call and responses with baritone Bradford Gleim and the chorus in a stirring “Rüste dich Seele.’’ Watson may have been holding the baton, but incarnadine-haired concertmaster Aisslinn Nosky was a Pied Piper of joy. She led the charge through Telemann’s “Sinfonia continuo,’’ bringing forth phrases with declamatory elan and springing into the air on the final note. And when all, singers and instruments alike, blended together for the beautifully plainspoken chorales that conclude Bach’s cantatas, the music was imbued with inner radiance. Truly it was a holiday gift, from the Handel and Haydn family to you.
HANDEL AND HAYDN SOCIETY
At Jordan Hall, Thursday. Repeats Sunday at 3 p.m.
Zoë Madonna can be reached at zoe.madonna@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @knitandlisten. Madonna’s work is supported by the Rubin Institute for Music Criticism, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation.
