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Handel Belshazzar for the Petersfield Festival; Mozart Exsultate Jubilate

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Handel Belshazzar for the Petersfield Festival; Mozart Exsultate Jubilate HANDEL BELSHAZZAR WINCHESTER MUSIC CLUB Winchester Music Club is affiliated to the National Federation of Music Societies which represents and 16 April 2005 supports amateur choirs, orchestras and music promoters throughout the United Kingdom. Programme Belshazzar - an oratorio by George Frideric Handel in the New Novello Choral Edition (Burrows) Katherine Bond soprano Nick Pepin counter tenor Stewart Conley-Harper counter tenor Kevin Kyle tenor James Gower bass WINCHESTER MUSIC CLUB AND ORCHESTRA Conductor: Nicholas Wilks Act I Interval of 20 minutes Act II followed by a short pause Act III We are indebted to the Friends of Winchester Music Club and to Winchester College, who help to make these concerts possible. Handel - Belshazzar “Your most excellent Oratorio has given me great Delight in setting it to Musick and still engages me warmly.” wrote Handel to his librettist Charles Jennens in September 1744. The story, taken from the Bible, Herodotus and Xenophon, is well known. Belshazzar, the idolatrous and tyrannical King of Babylon, holds a lascivious feast during which he taunts the captive Jews by drinking wine from the goblets stolen from the Temple in Jerusalem. After he ignores the warnings of his virtuous mother Nitocris and the Jews, a mysterious hand appears and writes an indecipherable message on the wall. Only the Jewish prophet Daniel can interpret the writing, which is a message from God: Belshazzar’s days are numbered and his reign is finished. That very night, the Persians invade, led by the gloriously enlightened Cyrus, the very model of a benevolent conqueror. Belshazzar’s death and Cyrus’s accession heralds liberation for the Jews and a more just regime for the Babylonians. But the plot has its human aspect too. The fate of the hedonistic King, determined to bring about his own ruin through his alcohol-fuelled libertine lifestyle, is transformed into a tragedy by the heartfelt love and fear of his long-suffering mother Nictoris, who has converted to worshipping the God of Israel (with aid from the conveniently placed prophet Daniel). The self-destructive King, doomed after ordering the gold vessels pillaged from the Temple at Jerusalem to be used at the drunken feast, is the model of selfish and idolatrous Kingship. In contrast, the invading Persian King Cyrus is the idealised monarch who shows dignity, compassion, modesty, respect, and wisdom. The secondary character Gobrias thirsts for revenge due to Belshazzar’s murder of his son. The emotionally complex relationships between the five main characters produce a magnificent and compelling drama. Handel’s music matches his libretto at every point. The comparison between the morally weak Belshazzar and the enlightened new order of Cyrus is strikingly made in Belshazzar’s defiant “I thank thee, Sesach” prior to the battle, followed soon after by Cyrus’s blazing “Destructive war”, a seemingly warlike aria that is in fact a flamboyant denunciation of tyranny and unjust war. The music of Belshazzar is full of such insights, but the moment when Gobrias achieves his revenge upon the tyrant (“To pow’r immortal my first thanks”) is Handel at his operatic best: Gobrias says he no longer weeps except for joy, but Handel’s string accompaniment makes it manifestly clear that Gobrias will never overcome the loss of his son. Other remarkable moments include Belshazzar’s naïve and headstrong feasting (“Let festal joy triumphant reign”), and the horror of the Jews when Belshazzar decides to drink from the sacred vessels (the chorus “Recall, o King, thy rash command”). There are practical problems associated with performing Belshazzar which may account for its relative neglect. The first performance was afflicted by enforced last minute changes to compensate for the illness of the alto Mrs. Cibber, and Handel never performed Belshazzar in a version that realised fully its potential brilliance. Moreover, when all the numbers are included the oratorio runs to an unwieldly three hours. Most performances combine the two versions we know were performed during Handel’s lifetime and make some modest cuts, some of which the composer suggested. We have followed this practice for this evening’s performance. The topicality of Belshazzar is striking. The last time I conducted this work the war with Iraq was about to commence, and the public justifications for invasion were ominously similar - the much-trumpeted threat of attack and the liberation of an oppressed people from a despotic and erratic ruler. Yet Belshazzar’ s contemporary relevance should not surprise us. As Nitocris’s first solo asserts, history is doomed to repeat itself, and the victory of one empire over another is merely part of a tragic pattern of decline and fall. Handel’s astonishing achievement in ‘Belshazzar’ is to bring this ancient story vividly to life while constantly maintaining a sense of its universality. (c) Nicholas Wilks 2005 Katherine Bond began her vocal studies with the Highcliffe Junior Choir, Sainsbury’s Choir of the Year 1996. In 2000 she graduated with First Class Honours in music from Cardiff University where she was awarded the Sir Geraint Evans Recitalist Prize and Vale of Glamorgan Young Singer of the Year Award. She has since won an Allcard Award from the Worshipful Company of Musicians, the Grisi & Mario Prize, 2nd Prize in the John Warner Memorial Award, 3rd Prize in the Great Elm Vocal Awards and the Isabelle Jay Competition. She was also a finalist in the Thelma King Award and in the Delius Prize earlier this year. Solo concert appearances have included performances of Bach Magnificat at Snape Maltings Concert Hall and Cantata 209 for the Tilford Festival; Britten Les Illuminations with the Royal Academy String Orchestra; Darlow Music for Holy Week premiere at St George’s, Hanover Square; Elgar The Kingdom in Winchester Cathedral; Handel Belshazzar for the Petersfield Festival; Mozart Exsultate Jubilate. She participated in the Omaggio Festival, collaboration between the Royal Academy and the South Bank, performing Berio’s Sequenza III in concert and on Radio 3’s In tune and recently returned from a week of masterclasses with Malcolm Martineau on Debussy and Poulenc songs with the Britten Pears Young Artist Programme. Katherine’s operatic experience includes Hippolyte et Aricie (Aricie) with Welsh National Youth Opera; Orlando (Dorinda), Idomeneo (Ilia), Dialogues des Carmelites (Blanche), Der Rosenkavalier (Sophie), The Rape of Lucretia (Lucia) in Royal Academy opera scenes; Eugene Onegin (Tatyana) with New Youth Opera; School for Fathers (Lucieta) and The Magic Flute (Papagena) with Royal Academy Opera. Katherine is currently studying on the Royal Academy Opera programme with Jennifer Dakin and Clara Taylor. Future engagements include Handel’s Belshazzar at Winchester College, The Armed Man (Mass for Peace) and the title role in Royal Academy Opera’s Spring production of Massenet’s Cendrillon. NICK PEPIN has held Lay Clerk positions as countertenor in many British cathedrals including Durham, Portsmouth, and most recently Winchester. In his position at Winchester he has sung on numerous CD recordings, recently a disk of Gibbons verse anthems with Hyperion, and has toured in the US, and throughout Europe. He sings regularly as a soloist in oratorio, especially Bach and Handel. Recent engagements include performances of Bernstein Chichester Psalms with the Bach Choir, London Festival Orchestra and Portsmouth Baroque Choir, Haydn Nelson Mass with the Northern Sinfonia and Orchestra of the 17th Century (USA), St Matthew Passion with Lichfield Choral Society, and numerous performances of Messiah (U.K., Sweden and U.S.A). Engagements locally have included Romsey and Swindon Choral Societies (St John Passion), Fareham Philharmonic Choir (Bach Magnificat) and the Petersfield festival at which he last performed Cyrus in the piece we hear again tonight (Handel Belshazzar). He is a member of the early music group Polyhymnia, specialising in Spanish renaissance repertoire. Performances have ranged from the Winchester International Early Music Festival, to Toledo, Spain. Nick has given many recitals, accompanied by his mother, June, a professional pianist, in Europe and the USA, and performs regularly as a soloist in lunchtime recitals. About five years ago he sang in the Denver cathedral choir for a 6 month period whilst on a Fulbright scholarship and during 2003/2004 he lived in Washington D.C. for a year. where he sang at the funeral of President Reagan as a member of the National Cathedral Choir. He has just released a solo CD of British song, “Gentle Springs” under his own label, Charlemagne. Stewart Conley-Harper (counter-tenor) was born in Beverley, East Yorkshire, and at the age of nine began singing as a chorister with Beverley Minster Choir. While studying for a degree in music at UEA Norwich, Stewart took up a post of Choral Scholar at Norwich Cathedral, and after graduating in 1996 he became a Vicar Choral at Wells Cathedral. Stewart moved to Chichester in 1998 and is currently an Alto Lay Vicar in the Cathedral Choir, with whom he has been involved in numerous concerts, broadcasts, recordings and tours. He regularly performs as a soloist at concerts in the local area. Recent performances include Bach St John Passion; Pergolesi Stabat Mater; Bernstein Chichester Psalms; and Purcell Come ye Sons of Art and King Arthur. He has also recently completed recordings of Purcell duets for BBC Television (which was used in its Dance for the Camera documentary series on BBC Two), and a CD of Bernstein Chichester Psalms. Along with his cathedral commitments, Stewart is a teacher of singing and piano at a number of local independent schools. Kevin Kyle (tenor) began his career in Music Theatre singing the role of Passarino in Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera. In 1999 he won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music where he currently studies on the opera course.
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