A Timeless Christmas Celebration

 

By Bryce Christensen

“The earth has grown old with its burden of care,” wrote the 19^th-century hymnist Phillips Brooks. “But at Christmas it always is young, / The heart of the jewel burns lustrous and fair /And its soul full of music breaks the air, /When the song of angels is sung.”  Those who gathered at the Heritage Center on the nights of December 11^th and 12^th for the Orchestra of Southern Utah’s annual performance of Handel’s Messiah experienced the miracle of which Brooks wrote, as the angelic songs of this Christmas classic swept away the years, renewing in heart and spirit all those in attendance.

It was, of course, entirely appropriate that OSU President Akins opened the evening by identifying this year’s performance as the 71^st in a series going back to the year before Pearl Harbor plunged the United States into World War II.  Appropriate, too, was the recognition of OSU violinist June Thorley as one of the participants (then just a child) in the 1940 inaugural of what has become one of Cedar City’s most beloved holiday traditions.  But from the stirring first notes of the Overture to the regal harmonies of the final “Worthy is the Lamb that Was Slain,” the decades melted away.  The Christmas “soul full of music break[ing] the air” transported the audience into a realm beyond time, beyond 1940, beyond 1743, when the oratorio’s brilliant “Hallelujah!” chorus brought George II to his feet in London, and even beyond the 1742 premiere in Dublin, where one reviewer wrote ecstatically, “Words are wanting to express the exquisite delight [the oratorio] afforded to the admiring and crowded Audience.”  As it resounded with the sacred meanings of ancient scripture, the oratorio slipped beyond the bounds of human years and centuries, drawing enraptured listeners into the divinely timeless. 

Once again delighting Cedar City listeners--who have come to cherish his exceptional gifts--OSU director Xun Sun led the talented instrumentalists under his baton with great passion, drawing from them a truly marvelous outpouring of celebratory music.  The polished skills of these instrumentalists were memorably evident in the strains of the opening Overture and the later Pastoral Symphony halfway through the oratorio.  But the thrill for listeners greatly intensified when the OSU instrumentalists were joined by the gifted chorus of vocalists, recruited and trained by choral director Adrianne J. Tawa. 

This thrill penetrated listeners’ hearts with particular power as more than 150 voices joined in the signature choruses of this timeless masterpiece.  Though the inevitable abridgement of Handel’s very long original work meant that listeners had to rely on their memory of past performances of some choruses, (such as “Since by Man Came Death”), the evening’s performance included truly breathtaking renditions of “And the Glory of the Lord,” “O Thou That Tellest,” “For Unto Us a Child is Born,” “Glory to God,” “Lift Up Your Heads, O Ye Gates,” and the absolutely essential “Hallelujah!” and “Worthy is the Lamb That Was Slain.”  Though all of these choruses lifted listeners into a heavenly joy, “For Unto Us a Child is Born” merits particular praise for its stunning fusion of exultant voices, soaring strings, luminous brass, and thunderous timpani.  What was especially impressive in this number—as in the other choruses—was the way in which the scores of singers under Tawa’s direction retained in their loudest notes the sublimity of worship.

The sublimity permeating the choruses also suffused the fifteen solos, performed by nine soloists.  Performing seven of the solos, alto Elise Read demonstrated remarkable versatility in rendering with perfect intonation and feeling numbers as different as the pleading “Comfort Ye My People,” the monitory “Thus Saith the Lord,” and the evocative “Behold, I Tell You a Mystery.”  Likewise delivering sublime renditions of Handel’s score was soprano Jackie Jackson, whose “Every Valley Shall be Exalted” captured the cadence of prophetic rapture, and alto Mary Fox, whose “O Thou That Tellest” set the triumphant tone for the irresistible chorus that joined her.  Soprano Geneil Perkins handled the difficult “Rejoice Greatly, O Daughter of Zion” with poise and seemingly effortless grace, and alto Taliah Johnson rendered “He Was Despised” with poignantly plaintive pathos.   Soprano Janese Shaw brought to her “I Know that My Redeemer Liveth” a piercing fervor, and Kim Padilla carried her “If God Be For Us” to a pitch of devout jubilation. 

As the only two male soloists for the evening, tenor Alex Byers delivered the probing interrogatives of “But Who May Abide the Day of His Coming?” with tones of insistent majesty, while bass Gregg Watts sounded the depths with moving profundity in a vocal rendition of “The Trumpet Shall Sound” that perfectly complemented Doug Harris’s radiant trumpet solo in the same number.

In the relative paucity of male soloists and in the decided predominance of female voices in the chorus as a whole, listeners could see something of the challenge Tawa faces in recruiting male voices for this annual performance.   Her resourceful flexibility in dealing with this challenge is evident not only in her surprisingly effective use of a female voice to sing a number typically assigned to a bass soloist (“Thus Saith the Lord”) but also in her even more surprising success in maintaining balance in the superb choruses.  Though Tawa would no doubt be the first to acknowledge that she could use more male singers, she deserves special recognition for so artfully directing the talented ensemble of singers available to her. 

The accomplishment of Tawa, of Sun, of the soloists, of the choir as a whole, and of the orchestra as a whole indeed richly merited the sustained standing ovations at the close of the two nights’ performances, ovations from listeners persuaded that in this year’s Messiah they had heard a “song of angels” that expunged all world-weariness and so renewed the Christmas marvel that makes the world celestially new again.