MUSIC: Rejoice, rejoice!
Israel in Egypt, All Hallows’ Church
Israel in Egypt, All Hallows’ Church NW3, 22nd March 2003
Undoubtedly the war in Iraq was a major incentive for me to sample the performance of Handel’s 'Israel in Egypt' of the Highgate Choral Society, accompanied by the New London Orchestra under their mutual director Ronald Corp. This splendidly punchy, self-confident celebration of outright knock-out victory was bound to be an antidote to the relentless defeatist, snide and querulous reporting of the war against Saddam which continues to stream from the BBC and elsewhere. Many of the choir members, known to me, are Conservatives – perhaps a bit of bracing Handel could even convert some of Highgate’s Liberal and Labour peace-monkeys?
The location – All Hallows’ Church Gospel Oak, a favourite of the HCS – is a good one. Rightly praised in Pevsner as ‘one of the noblest churches of its date in England’ (constructed between 1889 and 1915), with a high and white interior, the acoustics are fine – although the necessary deep recessing of the singers into the narrow chancel can risk problems of communication with the conductor. The chancel, incidentally, is the only part of the church which is fully vaulted. Clearly the nave was intended to be treated in the same way, but funds must have run out and the tiercerons running from the shafts along the nave are cut off at an early stage by the wooden roof. This gives an almost surrealistic feeling to the building, as one imagines the vaulting being extended in some parallel dimension.
'Israel in Egypt' is a fine example of the product invented and virtually patented by Handel, the biblical oratorio – a format which allowed him to provide entertaining pieces with all the audience-appeal of opera (apart of course from lavish staging), and which could be marketed during the Lent season as having religious intent. Handel’s upbringing in the German Pietist centre of Halle provided him with useful background for this; the educational traditions of the town included a full knowledge of the Old Testament – indeed the main school, which Handel may have attended, even taught Hebrew as part of its regular curriculum. England, Handel’s adopted country after 1720, was the only major European country which held the Old Testament in esteem in the eighteenth century, which undoubtedly assisted the composer in attuning himself to its taste and culture. These oratorios were also to bring him eventually a new audience, particularly after ‘Judas Maccabeus’ (1747), when London’s Jews, unused to representations of their traditional heroes, began to be attracted by this novelty. Handel cannily cashed in on this by producing over the next few years ‘Solomon’ and ‘Susanna’ and reviving ‘Samson’ and ‘Saul’. When, in 1750, the oratorio ‘Theodora’ was a failure, the peevish composer remarked ‘The Jews will not come to it because it is a Christian story; and the Ladies will not come, because it is a virtuous one.’
‘Israel in Egypt’ was written in only two weeks in 1739 shortly after ‘Saul’, with texts drawn from Exodus and the Psalms. Interestingly, the choice of subject was not dictated by religious considerations alone, but also by politics. England was fancying a war with Spain – a war, in the words of J. H. Plumb, ‘of plunder – but […] also felt to be both necessary and righteous’ (and therefore of course not at all like the present one). Sentiments such as ‘Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea’ should have been just the ticket for the mood of the nation.
Nevertheless, the oratorio was not a draw, vanishing after three performances and not revived by the composer until the year of his death in 1757. It is a mystery why this is so, as the music is strongly engaging. Perhaps the answer lies in the unusual preponderance of choral, rather than solo, music – or maybe the fault lay in the now rarely-performed first part, concerning the death of Joseph. Saturday’s performance consisted, as is present-day custom, of the remaining parts, namely the Ten Plagues and Moses’s Song of Victory following the crossing of the Red Sea. To deal with the absence of overture the performance was prefaced with two movements from one of Handel’s Organ Concerti, (nimbly fingered by Jane Watts).
The beginning of the first section was pure fun, and both chorus and orchestra revelled taking us through the plagues as much as Handel must have enjoyed describing them in his music. The elegantly leaping frogs (‘yea, even in the king’s chambers’), the swarms of locusts and the fierceness of the hailstorms are all brilliantly evoked. Most effective of all, perhaps, is the representation of darkness, where hushed tones, suspended harmonies and absence of pulse powerfully evoke sightless groping in an unknown environment. In contrast the starkness of the writing at the death of the Egyptian first-born, and the shocked repetition that ‘not one’ of them was left as the waters of the Red Sea overwhelmed the pursuing Egyptians make it clear that the composer was no crude triumphalist.
The Song of Moses is treated just as graphically. We are left in no doubt that the Lord ‘hath dashed in pieces the enemy’; we sense how ‘the depths were congested in the heart of the sea’; we gallop along with the enemy as he says ‘I will pursue, I will overtake’. The string instruments take a rest whilst the bassoons, flutes and oboes represent how ‘Thou didst blow with the wind’. Using the same harmonic techniques as in the first part’s ‘darkness’, but now at loud volume and accompanied by a throbbing beat, Handel makes it clear why ‘the people shall hear, and be afraid’. And thus onward to the indisputable exultation at the fate of ‘the horse and his rider’.
A packed house enjoyed this very energetic performance. The piece is extremely wearing and demanding on the choir – so much so that towards the end, the North London accent of the tenors belting out ‘The Lord shall reign for ever and ever’ was unmistakable – but they and the orchestra carried us through with great panache. Amongst the soloists the stirring performance of counter-tenor Andrew Watts deserves to be singled out. ‘Israel in Egypt’ may lack the elevation of ‘Messiah’ but it demonstrates the contention of my a friend I met in the audience – ‘there’s just no such thing as duff Handel’.
By the way, we were assured by the vicar at the interval that the church’s main drawback as a concert venue – its Siberian temperatures at nearly all seasons – would be remedied on all future occasions by the newly-installed heating system; so don’t be afraid to step out without your thermal underwear for the HCS’s May 17th performance of Beethoven’s ‘Missa Solemnis’. We may all hope that by this time we will have something to be thankful for.
Allen Buchler, March 24, 2003 10:31 AM