PBO Presents its “Home Edition” of HWV 56

Last night, as previously announced, the 2020/VIRTUAL Salon Series of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (PBO) & Chorale presented “Messiah: Shaken, not stirred.” This was a twenty-minute video edited by Tal Skloot of Tritone Media, compiling six “socially distanced” performances. The core of the program consisted of four arias from George Frideric Handel’s HWV 56 Messiah oratorio, each featuring a soloist with a different vocal range. These presentations were framed by two contributions from Music Director Richard Egarr, a solo harpsichord arrangement of the opening sinfonia to begin and a four-hand piano performance of the “Hallelujah” chorus performed with Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya on a fortepiano.

The video work was imaginative in a variety of different ways. Countertenor Reginald Mobley sang “How beautiful are the feet” as a duet, wearing different colored shirts in the video recordings of the respective parts. Accompaniment was provided by David Belkovski, playing the harpsichord at his home. In a similar vein, tenor Andrew Tortise recorded the videos of both his singing “But thou didst not leave his soul in hell” and his playing the accompaniment on piano. “If God be for us, who can be against us?,” on the other hand, was given a “church performance” with soprano Stefanie True socially distanced from Anthony Romaniuk at the organ console.

The “jewel in the crown,” however was the account of “Why do the nations so furiously rage together” by bass Joshua Bloom. Singing with a recording of the instrumental accompaniment, Bloom turned the words of Psalm 2 into a reflection on current world affairs. Using masks of Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin, and the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Bloom underscored the vanity behind all of that furious raging through a comic delivery with a very sharp edge.

The overture performance was based on a collection of keyboard arrangements published in London by John Walsh under the title (faithful to font size) “HANDEL’S SIXTY OVERTURES from all his OPERAS and ORATORIOS set for the HARPSICORD or ORGAN.” Egarr then added a generous share of his own embellishments to Walsh’s score pages. The four-hand “Hallelujah,” on the other hand was performed from an arrangement by Carl Czerny. The early nineteenth century was a time what four-hand playing was a major social recreation; and Skloot’s video captured the social nature of the recorded performance (complete with audience provided by Nipper):

Nepomnyashchaya and Egarr socializing for Nipper (screen shot from the YouTube video of “Messiah: Shaken, not stirred”)

As can be seen from the above caption, last night’s video stream has now been stored on YouTube for subsequent viewing.