Overture Magazine: 2017-2018 Season November-December 2017 | Page 32

HANDEL’S MESSIAH
Concert Artists of Baltimore
Symphonic Chorale
Founded by Edward Polochick and in its
31 st Season, Concert Artists of Baltimore
(CAB) consists of a professional chamber
orchestra and professional chamber
chorus. The full ensembles are featured
in the Maestro Series with performances
this season at Friends School, Baltimore
Basilica of the Assumption and the
Gordon Center.
CAB also offers chamber music and
the Mansion Series, with performances
at The Engineers Club at the Garrett-
Jacobs Mansion. This series showcases
smaller ensembles, such as a quartet or
small vocal group, and often features
unique repertoire.
The orchestra and chorus are frequently
hired for performances throughout the
region by other organizations, including
the Lyric Opera Baltimore, Moscow
Ballet, the Baltimore Basilica, Temple
Oheb Shalom, Johns Hopkins Medical
Institutions, McDaniel College, St. Louis
Church, The Holocaust Museum, The
Visionary Arts Museum, The Greek
Orthodox Church of St. George, Ballet
Theater of Maryland and Catholic
Charities. When more personnel are
needed, such as when the singers
of CAB perform Messiah with the
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the
chorus expands to the Concert Artists
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OV E R T U R E / BSOmusic.org
Symphonic Chorale. The 2015 –2016
season featured a collaboration with the
Baltimore Rock Opera Society at the
inaugural Light City Baltimore festival.
The mission of CAB is to present
classical music performances of well-
known and lesser-known composers by
an elite professional chorus and chamber
orchestra, thus providing a visceral
music experience to audiences in the
Greater Baltimore Metropolitan Area.
In 2015, CAB was one of 20 Baltimore
arts organizations chosen by the
DeVos Institute through a competitive
application process to participate in the
“Capacity Building Baltimore” program.
The Concert Artists of Baltimore Symphonic
Chorale last appeared with the BSO in
December 2016, performing Handel’s
Messiah, Edward Polochick, conductor.
About the Concert
MESSIAH
George Frideric Handel
Born in Halle, Germany, February 23, 1685,
died in London, England, April 14, 1759
Handel’s great oratorio Messiah has
become such a beloved musical icon in
the nearly 270 years since its birth in
1741 that it is not at all surprising that
many myths and legends have grown
up around it. We have been told that
Handel himself compiled its mostly
Biblical text or, alternatively, that it
was sent to him by a stranger; that its
success transformed him overnight
from a bankrupt operatic has-been to
England’s most revered composer; that
at its London premiere the king himself
rose during the “Hallelujah” Chorus to
express his approbation. But Messiah’s
real story is much more complicated,
though no less fascinating.
In the early 1740s, Handel was
indeed in considerable professional and
financial trouble. After emigrating from
Germany to England as a young man,
he had enjoyed a celebrated career as the
country’s leading composer of operas,
mostly in Italian and enhanced by
spectacular costumes and scenic effects.
But by the end of the 1730s, Handel’s
serious grand operas were falling out of
fashion. The success of John Gay’s much
simpler, English-language The Beggar’s
Opera fueled a new enthusiasm for
popular-style comic operas. Unable to fill
London’s opera houses anymore, Handel
retreated from the field and turned his
genius to sacred dramas, or oratorios.
He was not a novice in this genre.
Even while busy writing operas, Handel
had composed a number of oratorios,
notably Israel in Egypt and Saul.
Typically, his oratorios were not so very
different from his operas: they told a
dramatic story — in this case drawn from
the Bible or other sacred literature — and
their soloists played actual characters.
They were performed in theaters and
concert halls, not churches. But Israel in
Egypt took a new musical approach in
that the chorus now became the central
character. And Messiah, while giving
the soloists more to do, still emphasized
the chorus for its climactic moments.
Moreover, it broke with Baroque oratorio
tradition in that it was a meditation
on the coming of the Messiah and his
promise for humanity rather than a
narrative of events in his life.
Handel himself did not compile the
group of texts drawn from the Bible’s
Old and New Testaments for Messiah.
Instead, this was the work of Charles