NAC Messiah soloists range from sincere to compelling

Nearly every major orchestra in North America, and a good many minor ones, present Handel's Messiah every December. It is a time-honoured practice that appeals to the most conservative factions among subscribers; and if the performance is any good, it will give considerable pleasure to everyone involved.

A lot of factors determine whether it is any good, of course. How well does the orchestra play? Are the soloists of sufficiently good voice and well grounded in the style of Handel? What does the chorus sound like?

At the National Arts Centre there is a certain variability in these factors from year to year, but it's seldom that any is less than adequate. The Centre's fine orchestra could play this oratorio backwards with its collective eyes closed.

Reduced to a nice size for the baroque dimensions of Handel's oratorio, the orchestra did indeed play well last evening.

The NAC can afford good soloists, and the four who sang last night (and will again tonight) ranged from sincere, serviceable and generally likable in the case of soprano Arianna Zukerman to utterly compelling in countertenor Daniel Taylor's. Taylor was so good that he must have appealed even to those people who don't normally take to male altos.

In between, tenor Christopher Pfund didn't display a large voice, but had everything else, at least in Part I: an attractive sound, excellent musicality and great sensitivity to Handel's idiom. He did begin to lose a measure of control toward the end of Part II.

Bass Robert Pomakov has a big, dark voice that suits Messiah well, but he hasn't quite arrived in the control department, particularly in the passsage work.

The Cantata Singers, augmented by fifteen extra voices, were a little disappointing. They sang accurately enough, but sounded timid and uninvolved. This may have been in part due to tempos that seemed to owe more to caution than to musicality.

That brings us to the conductor. When all the other participants meet or exceed the basic requirements, it is the conductor who determines what the stylistic approach will be, how things will move along and, ultimately, whether Messiah will be exciting for everyone or an ordeal for those who have heard it more times than they can count.

William Boughton evinced a musical and fairly individual concept of the oratorio. His tempos tended to be slow, particularly by today's standards. In general they worked, though, except when they seemed to be sapping the ener- gy from the chorus.

There were some romantic mannerisms in his interpretation, like micromanaging the dynamics now and then and slowing the tempo when approaching a significant cadence.

All in all, an OK Messiah with a few special moments.