Word: oratorio
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...Mount of Olives (Jan Peerce, Maria Stader and Otto Wiener, soloists; the Vienna Academy Chorus and State Opera Orchestra conducted by Hermann Scherchen; Westminster). Put a few dozen voices anywhere under a choral director and they're apt to belt out the rousing final chorus of this oratorio; but its starkly eloquent arias are seldom heard. Singing Beethoven's Jesus, Tenor Peerce builds to a marvelous anguish, which unfortunately tends to increase when he is coping with high notes...
...This oratorio is a troublesome one. Handel wanted to write an epic. But he wished to convey more monolithic artistic ideas than a narrative could portray, and so dispensed with distinct characters and made the story of the crossing of the Red Sea only the first half of the work. What then resulted is what one scholarly critic called "an overblown anthem"--a series of resounding proclamation of the Lord's might, many of them superb in their declamatory power--yet the whole work lacks drama...
...Forbes captured well what form the Oratorio has. By maintaining an admirable control of dynamics, he made the individual choruses grow within themselves and contrast among each other; the work ended with the largest sound the group produced all evening. The chorus closing the first half, also sounding as if it were ending something, possessed a motet-like lightness which is a remarkable achievement in this style...
...soloists carried off the few solos in the oratorio excellently. The women, Junetta Jones and Janet Winburn, sopranos, and Betty Lou Austin, alto, had strong, vibrant voices. The men, all from the Glee Club, equalled them: Robert McKelvey, Clayne Robison, basses, made "The Lord is a Man of War" very convincing; Ivor Francis, tenor, was weak in his upper register, but contributed fluid recitatives and good airs. The orchestra was fine but not overly distinguished...
...after praising the choruses so, I should add that the oratorio has been done better, notably by Paul Callaway at the Washington Cathedral. A sniveling thing to do, perhaps, but it is an important qualification. The Choral Society, for one thing, was too frail when its parts were exposed. Yet what in some ways limited the Glee Club's performance helped in others: at times its resonant sound became dull--particularly in the opening narrative--but elsewhere created awesome solidity. Yet, because the oratorio's greatest asset is its power and not its drama, the Glee Club's distinctive sound...