Alexander's Feast

A few weeks ago at First Congregational Church in Berkeley I heard Philharmonia Baroque’s performance of Handel’s Alexander’s Feast; or, The Power of Musick, conducted by Nicholas McGegan. It’s a setting of Dryden’s poem, in which the banquet entertainment for Alexander the Great after he conquers Persia is a series of varied set pieces used by the musician Timotheus to control the conqueror’s emotional temperature. The ode then ends with a sudden switch to a later time and place, praising the superiority of St Cecilia’s heavenly music. It all sounds very random, like a baroque variety show, but it all flows smoothly and makes perfect emotional sense.

This work was I think one of the first Handel works I bought, so it’s only now, in describing how the ode moves, that I realized how random it is when it is described as a story rather than experienced as music. Hearing various recordings so many times engraves the work on your mind and it takes only a few notes to summon up entire sections which then recede back into memory. That can be a lot for a live performance to work against, but this one sure worked on me because I found the whole evening quite delightful. I have sometimes felt that Philharmonia Baroque tends to be too bouncy and cheerful in a way that slights the darker and grander side of Handel, but the grim and sad sections came through as grim and sad, though perhaps not enough for my companion, who announced afterward that they were all smiling too much up there.

The soloists were all very good. Dominique Labelle was quite sweet and then charmingly flirtatious as she teased out the lines describing how the prince “sigh’d and look’d, sigh’d and look’d, / Sigh’d and look’d, and sigh’d again.” Baritone Philip Cutlip sat oddly separated from the others, perhaps because he had the songs about such less sociable activities as drunkenness and revenge. My favorite part was the ringing tenor of Dann Coakwell.

There were a couple of odd minor mistakes in the program: the libretto says “Words by Newburgh Hamilton” but two pages earlier Scott Foglesong’s program note makes it clear that Hamilton only arranged John Dryden’s work. It seems odd to omit reference on the equivalent of a title page to the man who actually wrote the words. And in the program note Darius is described as Alexander’s father. Philip II of Macedon was Alexander’s father; Darius was father of Xerxes. Interestingly (though also irrelevantly), the ghost of Darius plays the same role as a reminder of fallen glory in what is probably the earliest surviving play in the western canon, Persians by Aeschylus.

Anyway, as I said I enjoyed the evening very much. I’d like to thank Philharmonia Baroque for the very excellent seats (my friend wondered why I was given such good seats; I told him that apparently no one important wanted them, which was lucky for us). I was especially grateful because a month or two before the concert, since I really wanted to hear this piece, I went on-line to buy a ticket and was frankly stunned by the extremely high prices. (To put the cost in some perspective, I heard three concerts by Magnificat for less than the price of one decent seat for this performance.) The thing is, I can think of many reasons why they would set those prices, but not so many reasons to justify my paying them. Their concerts are, in my experience, very well attended, so clearly lots of people can afford their tickets, but as far as I personally am concerned they’ve priced themselves out of the market. I don’t mean to sound crass by ending my reminiscence of aesthetic delight with a complaint about money, but here’s where bloggers and other nonprofessional reviewers can offer a perspective you can't get from professionals, who are used to receiving complimentary tickets. Professional reviewers talking about ticket prices is like a celibate clergy talking about birth control: they’re entitled to their opinion, but it’s not based on any personal risk. I feel a little awkward expressing sticker shock since I was given tickets, but I do feel I needed to mention it.