Word: orchestra
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...texture yet again. By the final movement, the Andante Maestoso, one had seen fleeting smiles pass across the faces of more than a few HRO members, and the toll taken by the the grand volume sustained throughout the finale showed in the flailing of broken bowhairs in the orchestra...
Friday's finale proved no less majestic than the Dvorak of November, even though the orchestra had had less time in which to prepare their repertoire. Even the Dallapiccola pieces were bearable, if only for the novelty of watching Randall Hodgkinson and the talented orchestra attack the variations. Variety is, after all, the spice of life...
...Boston's Shubert Theatre, and will feature Dominique Labelle, David Walker, Ray Bauwens and Eric Owens, though the December 6 performance was held in Symphony Hall and featured counter-tenor Steven Rickards insteaof David Walker. Associate Conductor John Finney leads H&H's marvelous chorus and period orchestra. Despite the press of weekend afternoons during the holiday season, Sunday's matinee performance was packed, with not an empty seat visible. The audience was richly rewarded for their time and responded with a thunderous, almost raucous standing ovation after the final "Amen" at the end of Part III, summoning the soloists...
...truth, every moment of the performance brings the audience such joy that it is difficult indeed to remain demurely seated and silent. Not only is each element--soloists, chorus, orchestra--magnificent in itself, but all are expertly balanced and coordinated by Finney's direction, producing in totality a truly memorable Messiah. Anyone who's ever heard Messiah, or indeed anyone who hasn't, should attend this production to experience it as Handel might have imagined and hoped it should...
...integrated it with the Western musical idiom he usually works in. The movie teases us with this traditional music, but uses it only to underscore savagery and apparent backwardness; any scene of real emotional charge or import to the plot is backed up with a typical Western-style orchestra and chorus. At one point, the Africans seem to have converted to Christianity, as they apparently hold aloft and make supplications to a copy of the Bible, a turn of events more than a little disturbing and perverse...