Beauty Reigns at Fourth May Festival Concert

Friday's fourth Cincinnati May Festival event began with a maypole dance in the Music Hall lobby by students of the Bonnie Williams Dance Studio.  It ended with Mendelssohn's cantata "Die Erste Walpurgisnacht" ("The First Walpurgis Night").
  Related?  Yes, like Halloween and the Christmas tree, the maypole derives from pre-Christian Europe when the first of May was celebrated as the beginning of spring, with bonfires, dancing and all the revelry associated with the end of cold weather.  (The name "Walpurgis" comes from St. Walpurga, an eighth-century nun whose feast day is observed April 30 in the Roman Catholic Church.)
   The name “May Festival” itself has a pagan connotation.
   James Conlon, celebrating his 30th anniversary as May Festival music director, gave the concert a dual aspect, beginning with three “Hallelujah” choruses and ending with Mendelssohn’s “Walpurgisnacht.”
   The first half comprised “Hallelujah, Amen” from Handel’s oratorio “Judas Maccabeus,” “Hallelujah” from “Messiah,” the final chorus from Beethoven’s “Christ on the Mount of Olives,” and Bach’s “Magnificat.”
   Choruses from Schubert’s “Rosamunde” and Mendelssohn’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” were heard after intermission, followed by Mendelssohn’s cantata about heathens asserting their beliefs in newly Christianized Europe.
  Performing were the May Festival Chorus directed by Robert Porco, sopranos Ellie Dehn and Hana Park, mezzo-soprano Jill Grove, tenor Rodrick Dixon, bass-baritone James Johnson, bass James Creswell and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
   The “Hallelujah’s” filled the hall nicely.  “Hallelujah, Amen” from “Judas Maccabeus,” celebrating the victory of the Jewish hero over Syrian invaders in 164 BCE, was brief but powerful.  Beethoven’s “Hallelujah” finale, the only part of his oratorio that is regularly heard, was solid and inspiring.  As per tradition, listeners were drawn to their feet by “Hallelujah” from “Messiah,” where principal trumpeter Robert Sullivan rendered his tricky descent from the heights with remarkable ease and flair.  
   Bach’s Magnificat utilized a reduced orchestra, with minimal string vibrato, marvelous piccolo trumpets and fine solo work by principal oboist Dwight Parry and flutists Jasmine Choi and Kyril Magg.  The vocal soloists were superb.  Soprano Dehn led off to refined effect in “Et exsultavit” and “Qui respexit,” where Parry’s plaintive sound echoed the humility of the Virgin Mary’s response to the angel Gabriel’s announcement.
   Tenor Dixon was bright-edged and agile in “Deposuit” and Grove lent her rich voice to a tasty “Esurientes,” garnished just-so by the flutes.  Grove and Dixon gave heart-touching effect to “Et misericordia” against softly brushed, muted strings, while bass Creswell invested “Quia fecit” with beauty and vocal heft.   
   The 130-plus chorus was a bit unwieldy for Bach’s counterpoint, but the feelings in the music were well expressed.  “Sicut locus,” for an ensemble of sopranos and altos, had a positively angelic effect.
   Some of the loveliest music heard at the entire 2009 festival came after intermission.  Choruses from Schubert’s incidental music for “Rosamunde” – who knows what the play was really about since it is lost – caressed the ear as only Schubert can.  “The Chorus of Shepherds,” where in the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to love, was utterly charming, given a lovely, able assist by associate principal clarinetist Jonathan Gunn.  (This listener was reminded of the choruses in Rossini’s “William Tell,” indicating that Schubert could have been a great opera composer given the right material to work with.)
   The jolly “Chorus of Huntsmen” brought the CSO horns into play for a rollicking effect.
   Speaking of pagan, Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” inhabits the fairy world much of the time, with the amorous entanglements of mortals intertwined with those of Titania and Oberon, royals of the fairy realm.  Mendelssohn has forever glorified the play with his magical, incidental music.  Park and Dehn spun lines of gossamer beauty in “You Spotted Snakes” where a pair of fairies stand guard over the sleeping Titania to protect her from denizens of the wood accompanied by snaky, spidery figures in the orchestra.
   The final “Through this house give glimmering light,” which recaps music from the wonderful Overture, received a stylishly gentle and affecting interpretation by the chorus and CSO.
   “Die Erste Walpurgisnacht,” a work far too infrequently heard, was sung in German (use of English surtitles at festival concerts has made the event more audience friendly, as well as eliminating the noise of hundreds of pages turning to follow the texts).  Perhaps it’s the message, for the pagans talk back to the Christians here by scaring the pants off them with their May’s Eve rituals.
   “Let us terrify these Christians with the Devil they’ve invented,” sings the chorus at one point.  (It must have been delicious for Mendelssohn, a Jew who had felt compelled to convert to Christianity.)
   There is an all-encompassing nobility about the work, a kind of plea for freedom of religion.  There’s also plenty of mischief, which the composer captured in some extremely colorful orchestral writing.  You could hear nature’s harangue itself when the chorus invoked owls to join them in their “noisy howls.”
   Dixon announced the Walpurgis Night festivities, following the Overture, a treat in itself, evoking the composer’s “Scottish” Symphony and shades of Johannes Brahms to come.  French hornists Thomas Sherwood and Matthew Annin shone brightly here in their lengthy offstage solo.
   Mezzo Grove was darkly grave as an old woman cautioning the people not to invite retribution from their Christian neighbors.
   Baritone Johnson and Creswell bespoke the dignity and majesty of the druid leaders urging their people to keep the faith, while the chorus gave crisp enunciation to their repeated “Kommt’s” (“Come”) as the pagan folk screwed up their courage.
   Dixon returned near the end as a terrified Christian witness awed by apparitions of witches, werewolves and “dragon women.”  Johnson reprised the druid priest’s prayer to the Allvater ("Great Father") that their faith be purified by the smoke, asking “if they rob us of our rite, could any rob us of your light?”
   As if to break the pagan spell, Conlon encored with a repeat of the “Hallelujah” Chorus from “Messiah,” in which the audience joined wholeheartedly.
   Conlon leads the festival finale, Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 (“Symphony of a Thousand”), at 8 p.m. tonight at Music Hall with over 500 participants, including the May Festival and Cleveland Orchestra Choruses, Cincinnati Children’s Choir, the CSO and eight soloists.  Tickets are scarce, but you can try at the Music Hall box office, open today from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and one hour before the concert.