Mendelssohn’s Opus 70 Fall Short of the Mark

Wilhelm Hensel’s 1847 portrait of Felix Mendelssohn (public domain, from a Wikimedia Commons Web page)

Last night Davies Symphony Hall provided the venue for a performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 70 Elijah oratorio. The conductor was Robert Geary, Artistic Director of the San Francisco Choral Society (SFCS), joined by four vocal soloists: soprano Michelle Rice, mezzo Courtney Miller (making her SFCS debut), tenor Brian Thorsett, and bass Eugene Brancoveanu. These vocal resources were further extended by the San Francisco Girls Chorus Premiere Ensemble. The instrumental ensemble was the California Chamber Symphony.

In music history, Mendelssohn is known not only for the catalog of his compositions but also for his revival of interest in music from the Baroque period. My knowledge of his preparing a performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 244 St Matthew Passion in 1828 goes all the way back to my secondary school years. Elijah, on the other hand, was first performed on August 26, 1846; and Mendelssohn would die a little over a year later on November 4, 1847. He was 38 years old at the time.

In many respects Mendelssohn may be best known for just how much he was able to achieve in so little time. Mind you, his cycle of thirteen string symphonies was composed between the ages of twelve and fourteen; but that means that, for the most part, his achievements took place within the span of a quarter century, which is enough to raise most eyebrows! Nevertheless, there is a decided degree of facility in his achievements, which suggests that, however engaging the surface structure may be, little can be found in “what lies beneath.”

Thus, while there was no faulting the commitment that Geary brought to his impressive array of resources, it was hard to avoid coming way feeling that the breadth of scope in the narrative of Old Testament episodes was more than Mendelssohn could match with his capacities for musical rhetoric. Even the most sympathetic listener probably succumbs to a here-we-go-again attitude well before the first of the two parts of the oratorio have concluded. Geary clearly did his best to keep the pace going, but the score itself did little to assist him.

Still, there was much to appreciate in the overall choral work. On the solo side much of the burden was carried by Brancoveanu, whose delivery was consistently engaging. The weakest of the four soloists was Miller, who had her good moments but never really kept up with her colleagues. According to my records, this was my first encounter with Elijah in performance; and my only other account involved writing about a box set of the Mendelssohn oratorios during my Examiner.com period. I cannot say that I regret the sparseness of opportunities to listen to this aspect of Mendelssohn’s repertoire.