MUSIC OF THE BAROQUE
at DePaul University Concert Hall
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MOB music director Thomas Wikman did a far more stylish job with The Creation than he has with the Mozart works I have heard him perform, largely because Haydn’s phrases are more choppy than Mozart’s lyrical ones and so they better suit Wikman’s conducting style. The conducting here was still slow, but Wikman was able to make a convincing case for his tempi, and he was not as heavy-handed as he has been with his Mozart. Balances were good, as were instrumental ensembling and dynamic contrasts. In fact, Wikman’s Haydn was better than that of most of the conductors who have been leading the Chicago Symphony in its ongoing five-year Haydn retrospective. Wikman got a beautiful string sound and achieved a more successful blend and balance of winds to strings–something he has always emphasized in the Bach passions.
The choir produced its usual large and mostly loud sound–part of the 19th-century choral aesthetic Wikman likes for such works. Which is fine if that’s what you like, but more attention should still have been paid to matching up individual voice timbres within each section for a cleaner sound. Sometimes the choral texture was pretty muddled, though for the most part the sections were well-balanced. The solo singing too was mostly disappointing. Bass Myron Myers, who sang the narrative role of Raphael, was strong in his projection and timbre but very unfocused in his pitch and diction. His voice often sounded so vibratic that one could imagine he was being pounded on the back, an effect that was minimized when he held back his voice, which was usually too loud anyway. Soprano Patrice Michaels Bedi, who has become the leading early-music soprano in town, sang the role of Gabriel, but with an uncontrolled, tight vibrato that was very uncharacteristic. Was she adapting her voice to those around her, or was this just a bad night? Tenor William Watson sang the role of Uriel with apparent strain and poor diction, though he did manage some moving and expressive moments in his solo passages. The trios combining Myers, Watson, and Bedi in the first two parts of the work basically followed a pattern: Bedi drowned out Watson, and Myers matched her in volume but not in technique or vibrato speed.
The major work of the afternoon, the Shostakovich Symphony no. 14, fared much better. It was conducted by CDC music director and concertmaster Hilel Kagan, who picked up his instrument only once near the beginning (so the rest of the performance had no concertmaster), then remained seated in his chair and conducted everyone from there. Why? He was cueing and directing in exactly the same way any stand-up conductor would, but neither the singers nor performers could see him as well. The performance was tight, but it would have been tighter if he had been clearly visible.
