The San Francisco Bach Choir opens its 2009-2010 concert season with an all-Handel program, comprising four of the composer’s 11 Chandos Anthems (“Let God Arise,” “The Lord Is My Light,” “I Will Magnify Thee, O God,” and “O Sing unto the Lord a New Song”), Oct. 17-18 at San Francisco’s Calvary Presbyterian Church. These multimovement, cantatalike pieces, composed in 1717-18 during Handel’s tenure as composer in residence for England’s Duke of Chandon, are “filled with sunshine,” according to Corey Jamason, S.F. Bach’s artistic director. Jamason views the anthems as “a marvelous, somewhat early, expression of Handel’s enormous gifts for bringing the vivacity of his operatic masterpieces to sacred music.” And because the anthems remain curiously underrepresented in live performance, these concerts offer a welcome opportunity for in-person encounters with some hidden treasures.
S.F. Bach’s program showcases the versatility of Handel’s talent while also keeping some practical exigencies in mind. Jamason says his selections are “well-balanced and display the range and variety of these magnificent pieces. They also all have only soprano and tenor singers, which in our performances are sung by two terrific soloists, Erica Schuller and Craig Lemming.” As a side benefit, the all-Handel program also fills some gaps in the choir’s own history. “S.F. Bach has not performed much Handel in the past,” Jamason notes. “As this is only my third season with the group, I am now able to fill in some gaps and address a broader repertoire.”
The California Bach Society, meanwhile, features Handel’s outstanding psalm setting Dixit Dominus as the climax of a program devoted to Italian vespers music, in three performances Oct. 16-18 in San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Berkeley. With Vivaldi’s Domine adjuvandum me festina and Scarlatti’s Magnificat primo tono also on the bill, these vespers pieces let you to hear Handel and his contemporaries writing in the same general style, with their individual differences.
While the Chandos Anthems find Handel adapting himself to an English liturgical environment, Dixit Dominus was composed by a young composer for a sophisticated Italian audience. “One gets the sense,” Flight explains, that this ‘oltremontani’ [person from beyond the Alps] composer was striving to outdo his Italian rivals in hope of securing lasting employment. The work has enough rhythmic energy, contrapuntal complexity, and pathos necessary to win over any cardinal, city official, or congregant.” But then Handel's music never had trouble connecting with audiences.