HANDEL Jephtha • Jane Glover, cond; David Portillo ( Jephtha ); Lauren Snouffer ( Iphis ); Katelyn Lee ( Angel ); Clara Osowski ( Storgè ); Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen ( Hamor ); Neal Davies ( Zebul ); Music of the Baroque Ch & O • REFERENCE 755 (2 SACDs: 132:42 ) Live: Skokie, IL 9/18/2022

This new recording of Handel’s last oratorio, Jephtha, is sourced from a live performance given in Chicago in September 2022 by Music of the Baroque under the direction of the renowned Handel and Mozart expert, Jane Glover. The performance uses modern instruments, but is performed in a highly historically-aware and authentic manner, and the contributions by all of the main vocalists, as well as the chorus and the orchestra itself, are uniformly superb. Glover’s clear-eyed yet impassioned interpretation of the score is completely convincing, and this new recording is compelling, clearly benefitting from the bond the conductor has formed with many of these performers over her more than two decades as music director of Music of the Baroque.

In my interview with Glover that precedes this review, she explains how impressed she has always been by Handel’s “constant invention, imagination and originality.” Absolutely! This is an extraordinary score in so many ways, but what for me marks this music out as something truly special is the incredibly powerful and personal dramatic tension the composer conjures up in the third and fourth scenes of Part II. This is where Jephtha is finally confronted with the real-life consequences of the vow he made to God to guarantee his victory in battle, as it has turned out that the victim doomed to die as a result of that vow will be none other than his own daughter, Iphis. The dramatic tension portrayed in the music here is truly stunning, bringing Handel the opera composer boldly to the fore. This is great music, and it draws from all of the performers inspired singing (and playing). For me the extended dramatic interplay witnessed here is the clear highlight of Music of the Baroque’s performance.

All of the main singers here deliver memorable portrayals. In the title role, tenor David Portillo is convincing as both leader and father, but especially as the latter. Of all of the main cast (and excepting Katelyn Lee as the Angel, who has a much smaller role), Portillo is the one who employs the most color in his sound, via the agency of vibrato. That said, this aspect of his singing is also almost always tightly controlled, only very occasionally becoming a little uncomfortable in the very highest register. Clara Osowski as Jephtha’s wife, Storgè, and Neal Davies as his half-brother, Zebul, are both excellent. Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen is perhaps even better as Hamor, the potential husband of Jephtha and Storgè’s only child, Iphis. It is Lauren Snouffer as Iphis, however, who perhaps steals the show here, as her performance is simply spectacular, both dramatically and vocally. A fine lyric soprano, Snouffer has exceptional control over all parts of her range, with the top particularly effortless and captivating. Her Baroque trills are Sutherland-esque, and she is also not afraid to sing with great imagination, such as when she utilizes a virtually completely straight tone on the word “content” in the Air “Happy they!”, to ravishing—as well as almost terrifying—effect. (Iphis’s outward acceptance of her death sentence is not the most believable of dramatic events in the history of oratorios.)

The orchestral playing—as well as the chorus work—on this new recording is first-rate, and one hardly notices the fact that the performance is delivered on modern instruments. The one occasion that does sound a little strange to my ears is the solo flute in Storgè’s Air “In gentle murmurs will I mourn” in Part I, where the audibility of the metallic construction of the modern instrument doesn’t sound quite right to someone used to listening to music of this era on period instruments. (The flute is balanced very forward as well, which probably contributed to how this sounded for me.) The chorus work is excellent, with its “How dark, O Lord”—with which Part II ends—being perhaps the highlight in its dramatic intensity and power.

For anyone familiar with Reference Recordings, you will not be disappointed, as the same exceptional standards that have been universally recognized in so many of their previous releases are clearly also in evidence here. The recording is present and vibrant, as well as offering a wide and deep soundstage, and the balance of the harpsichord—so often disappointingly either too loud or too soft—seems particularly right here. All of the solo voices are placed forward in the balance, but not excessively so, and the recording retains that special sort of frisson that the best live performances so often convey.

This is an exciting new release from Reference Recordings that presents as compelling and dramatic a performance of Handel’s Jephtha as I have heard. Urgently recommended. William Kempster

 

An Interview with Dame Jane Glover on Her Recording of Handel’s Jephtha with Chicago’s Music of the Baroque
By William Kempster

The renowned English conductor speaks about her new Handel recording, and working in Chicago, as well as initiating a new partnership with Reference Recordings.

I have been aware of your work for some time, but admit I was surprised to realize that you have been the music director of Chicago’s Music of the Baroque (MOB) for more than two decades. Can you give our readers a quick summary of how you came to form your relationship with this group, and perhaps give us a few highlights of that collaboration over the years?

I have been music director of MOB since 2002. I first came to Chicago to conduct Monteverdi’s Orfeo for Chicago Opera Theater in 2000, which happened to coincide with when MOB was about to conduct a search for their new Music Director. I was invited to be part of that search, went through the audition process, and here I still am, 23 years later! Over these two decades, I do believe the relationship between me and the musicians (both instrumentalists and singers) has developed profoundly. Whenever I return to them, we begin on an ever-higher level of familiarity and understanding. I adore them, and I adore the work we do together. I feel incredibly blessed to be part of this organization.

In terms of highlights, there have been so many! Whenever we do the two great Passions of Bach, or his Christmas Oratorio, or the Mass in B Minor—all of which we regularly rotate—it is always an event. I love doing the 18th-century choral masterpieces (and therefore combining our wonderful chorus with our players): We recently opened the current season with Haydn’s mighty Creation, and Jephtha was indeed part of another occasional series of major oratorios by Handel. There are smaller highlights too: We love to curate fun programs like “Rival Divas,” where we featured music written for Handel’s two greatest sopranos, and then Mozart’s two greatest sopranos. On two occasions we have stepped out of our modern-instrument milieu and deployed period instruments for the music of Monteverdi. His 1610 Vespro della Beata Vergine was definitely another highlight for me.

You just mentioned doing the Monteverdi Vespers with period instruments as being “out of our modern-instrument milieu,” so I wonder whether you might comment on the reasons why Music of the Baroque does in fact normally play on modern instruments, and what methods you employ to still get an “authentic” Baroque sound from the ensemble.

Music of the Baroque has always been a modern instrument orchestra. My predecessor, the group’s founder, Thomas Wikman, started the ensemble much in the way that Neville Marriner started the Academy of St Martin in the Fields: He invited the best players from the front desks of the big orchestras—in our case the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) and the Lyric Opera orchestra—to join him. We continue this practice to this day. Our concertmaster, Gina de Bello, is a member of the CSO, as are our principal horn, principal bassoon, and many other players. Some of our musicians, like Elizabeth Hagen (our principal viola), also have extensive experience on period instruments. As a result, over the years the ensemble has developed a wonderful awareness of the sort of sound that we want: one that matches historically informed practices, although created on modern instruments. I am often thrilled to find when our players come to us for an afternoon rehearsal—with many of them have spent the morning playing Bruckner or Wagner—it takes us about five minutes, honestly, no more, to find our sound. I truly believe we have the best of both worlds: first-rate, committed players who have a profound sensitivity to the ethos and rhetoric of the 17th and 18th centuries. We achieve our sound through details of articulation, bowing, phrase shape, even note shape, and the deployment (or not…) of vibrato.

Can you give our readers some sense of the planning that goes into a recording of major repertoire such as this? When was Jephtha decided upon for inclusion in the 2022 series? At what stage in preparatory plans were singers recruited for the major roles? What was your role as director in recruiting these singers, and how many of them (if any) did you know personally prior to this point? At what stage was Reference Recordings brought into the loop with a view to releasing a high-definition recording of this event?

We planned to open our 2022–23 season with Jephtha, one of the greatest and most personal of Handel’s oratorios, about two years before. Bear in mind that this was COVID time, and everything was very uncertain, but we knew we really wanted to do it. We cast is as the season became firmer. I do all the vocal casting together with our Artistic Planning team (there are four of us, including me). With the exception of Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, I already knew all of the singers we cast, having worked with them previously and loving their artistry. I had long admired Aryeh’s work and was excited by the prospect of collaborating with him (and he certainly did not disappoint!). I was thrilled with the whole team.

Reference Recordings was brought into the loop in October 2022, a month after the recording was made. Declan McGovern, our executive director, had worked with them when he was with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, overseeing Manfred Honeck’s RR recordings with the PSO.

You just mentioned Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen specifically. Do you have any insights for our readers on Handel’s (and others’) high-pitch writing for male protagonists during this period? What do we know about the singers who took these roles during the 18th century, and how closely do you feel a modern male countertenor comes to the sound the composer would have imagined?

Well, we certainly have no castrati these days! Those who sang for Handel were truly remarkable singers and truly remarkable all-round musicians, for it was they who inspired Handel to write in the way that he did. The modern countertenor is a wonderful substitute, as indeed is the female mezzo-soprano. We should remember that Handel himself often had women sing his male roles. There are many different colors of the countertenor voice, as indeed there are of all voice types. Some have great height and flexibility. Others have great warmth in the lower register. When casting any of these roles, we always look for the voices that will fit the demands Handel made of his original singers.

I understand that the new recording of Jephtha was compiled from live recordings set down in 2022. How many performances did you have access to in order to put together this final version? What role, if any, did you play in the editing phase of the recording?

We did just two live performances of Jephtha. They were brilliantly recorded and edited by our sound engineer, Chris Willis, ably assisted by Declan McGovern. Chris has received numerous Grammy Awards for his work with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Declan has a great deal of editing experience from his days at the BBC, where, incidentally, I first met him.

You have a fine reputation not only as a conductor, but also as a music historian, and it is well known that you are an expert in many areas, but perhaps most particularly regarding both Mozart and Handel. Can you try to put into words some of the reasons why you have been (considering our current focus) so drawn to Handel’s music throughout your career?

It is hard to put into just a few words what I feel about Handel. I have been conducting his music all my life, operas, oratorios (including well over 100 performances of Messiah!), and instrumental music, and I am unfailingly overwhelmed by his constant invention, imagination, and originality. Quite beyond his technical mastery and wonderful showmanship, there is incredible emotional depth and veracity in his music. There is no finer example of that than Jephtha.

Following on from that, you have described Jephtha elsewhere as “one of the greatest” of Handel’s oratorios. Can you perhaps explain to our readers some of the reasons why you regard this piece so highly?

As this was Handel’s last oratorio, and considering the circumstances under which it was written—where the composer was in great physical discomfort on account of his rapidly failing eyesight, meaning he could not work for long periods at a time—it is also his most personal. As such, it is at times overwhelmingly and searingly emotional. All the protagonists are drawn with the sophisticated insight of Handel the opera composer, and their music reflects their deep involvement in this dreadful story. The choruses too have great range and variety, requiring some vocal “acting” from our choristers, as well as brilliant contrapuntal discipline.

In my experience working as a choral conductor in the USA, I have found one of the challenges of doing English repertoire has been the difficulty many American singers have with “British” English pronunciation. Have you encountered this as an issue at all in your time working in the USA? If so, can you perhaps give our readers some insights into what is involved, and any methods you might have employed to get over any such issues?

With regards to “British” English, while I totally respect and enjoy American pronunciations, I do occasionally feel that the color of some vowels disturbs the line as imagined or conceived by the composer, and I invite singers to change it. This is always achieved in a spirit of cheerful cooperation!

There has been something of a trend for a while now of trying to stage some of Handel’s oratorios as almost quasi-operas. How do you feel about this, and how was Jephtha presented to the live audience in Chicago?

I have in fact conducted staged version of Jephtha (in Bordeaux), and Theodora(the celebrated Glyndebourne staging by Peter Sellars). The oratorios are so intensely dramatic in content and narrative and pacing that they can adapt well to the theater, even given the challenge of lengthy contrapuntal choruses. (I have seen some staged horrors, though—but will not divulge any further details!)

We did not have any staging for our Chicago Jephtha, which was presented as a straightforward concert performance. I do believe there are real strengths in this, however, because the audience members are invited to use their own imaginations, as when listening, for example, to a radio drama.

I see in the recording details that you also played harpsichord on this recording. I would imagine many of our readers would stylize the role of “conductor” as the person “out the front” all of the time, but not actually involved in making sounds, for want of a better description. Can you perhaps flesh out for these readers how your leadership of this performance (and, likely, many others) actually manifested itself, in terms of direction from the keyboard and pure “conducting,” as well as the practicality of how those roles fit together.

I like to play keyboard in the recitatives whenever I do works by Handel or Mozart, and other composers from this time period. In that way I continue to pace the drama, and am part of the process of releasing the inflections of the text in the most natural way. I do have another continuo player—here the excellent Michael Beattie—to play all the arias and choruses.

Can you speak briefly about the role you see the act of recording performances has played in your work with MOB?

We’ve made a number of recordings over the years, and one release every year for the past number of seasons, including the four major choral works of J. S. Bach, which was a project of our 50th anniversary two years ago. Up to now we have self-produced and released our recordings, and Jephtha is the first time we have issued a worldwide release. We are thrilled to be doing this through Reference Recordings in San Francisco, as it has such an esteemed reputation in releasing recordings of the highest quality.

We record all our concerts, and many of them are made available on WFMT (the Chicago-based classical radio station), and through radio syndication across the nation. Since the pandemic we also video all our concerts, and the promotional clips for Jephtha come from one such recording. These “on-demand” videos, available for 30 days after the concerts, have been very helpful in building closer bonds with our audience, not just in Chicago but much further afield, and it is wonderful to have a comprehensive visual, as well as audio, archive of the works we perform each season.