By Robert Croan
Jubilant music for the coronations of kings and other autocrats was the unifying element in Master Chorale of South Florida’s Handel and Mozart program [seen Oct. 24 in Bailey Hall on Broward College’s Davie campus].
Artistic director Brett Karlin conducted Handel’s four Coronation Anthems, written for the coronation of England’s King George II in 1727. With texts chosen from the King James translation of the Bible (then barely a century old and thought of as modern), Handel’s anthems have been performed at the coronations of British monarchs ever since.
Following was Mozart’s Coronation Mass in C Major (K. 317), composed not for a coronation but for Easter Sunday service in 1779, part of the composer’s duties as organist and court composer of the Salzburg Cathedral. The epithet came a year after Mozart’s death, in 1792, when the Mass was performed at the coronation of Francis II as Holy Roman Emperor.
Master Chorale is South Florida’s premier community-based choir, with a roster of 124 singers, on this occasion supported by a 29-piece orchestra — the instrumental forces appropriate in size to 18th-century performance practice. Given the size and proportions of the vocal contingent, Karlin achieved an admirable degree of clarity, both in the intelligibility of the words and the lucidity of the lines of the inner voices. It is significant that the Handel pieces were intended for sizable numbers of singers, a large choir of that time being close to 50 voices. The Mozart Mass would have been conceived for more modest numbers.
Handel’s Zadok the Priest, the first of the anthems in modern-time coronations, is the shortest and most famous of the four, but its barely six-minute duration includes a stately introduction bursting into a jubilant chorus — from the biblical description of the anointment of King Solomon, then a dance-like section of rejoicing and a setting (not the familiar one) of “God save the King!”
It was a rousing beginning, but what came after was even more substantial and satisfying. Let Thy Hand Be Strengthened, based on Psalm 89, was particularly effective for the instrumental component along with the voices, the virtuoso playing of oboist Antonio Urrutia being a special joy here and throughout the evening. That virtuosity was reflected in the excellent choral work of the plaintive middle movement and the rousing fugal “Alleluia” that concludes this anthem.
Much the same may be said for the third anthem, The King Shall Rejoice, the most elaborate and pomp-filled, with four gorgeous sections concluding with another fugal “Alleluia” punctuated with marvelous “A!” exhortations. Karlin controlled his choir so that even the loudest sounds were never harsh or shouted, while each and every phrase was lovingly shaped.
The final anthem, My Heart is Inditing, is gentler than the first three, intended for the coronation of the new queen. Here, the solo quartet of soprano Elisse Albian, mezzo-soprano Amanda Crider, tenor Andrew Bearden Brown and baritone Harrison Hintzsche came on stage with an anemic delivery that projected poorly into the large auditorium.
Mozart’s Coronation Mass is as jubilant as the anthems, but in a more operatic way. Soprano Albian had some coloratura fireworks in the early “Christe eleison” section, which she delivered with assurance and aplomb. The chorus’s joyful outbursts, such as the “Gloria” and later the “Hosannas,” were conveyed with volume and brightness that avoided shouting or harshness. The stern “Credo” exhortation was sober and comprehensible — the “Crucifixus” even more so.
Most of the solo lines are incidental in this Mass, with the exception of the “Agnus Dei,” which is a full-blown aria in which the opening lines foreshadow the Countess’s “Dove sono” in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, composed seven years later. Albian’s delicate delivery had admirable legato, and she imparted to one ornamental cadence, a high concentration of emotion.
Karlin summed up his obvious pleasure in the act of music making, in the work’s concluding moments, a quite personal amalgam of peace and joy.