(+++) SOLEMNITY REINTERPRETED

Arvo Pärt: Odes of Repentance. Cappella Romana conducted by Alexander Lingas. Cappella Records. $17.99.

Handel: Israel in Egypt—adaptation by Jeannette Sorrell. Apollo’s Singers and Apollo’s Fire Baroque Orchestra conducted by Jeannette Sorrell. AVIE. $17.99.

     Arvo Pärt (born 1935) has a longstanding intimate relationship with the Orthodox Church’s liturgy and Byzantine poetry reflecting Orthodox beliefs. Cappella Romana is expert in presenting sacred music ranging from medieval Byzantine chant to Greek and Russian Orthodox choral works. Thus, saying that the Cappella Romana presentation of Pärt’s Odes of Repentance seems an ideal merger of composer and performers borders on cliché – which does not make the assertion any less true. What the chorus under Alexander Lingas does in this new recording on the ensemble’s own label is to create an Orthodox Service of Supplication that includes three odes from the composer’s Kanon Pokajanen (Kanon of Repentance) plus hymns, prayers, and even a central Gospel reading from Matthew 26:6-13 – the story in which a woman pours precious ointment from an alabaster box onto Jesus’ head, the Disciples say it would have been better to sell the ointment to get money for the poor, and Jesus explains that the poor will always be present but that He will not, and the woman has poured the ointment for His burial. Pärt has his own compositional technique and tends to be thought of as a minimalist composer who uses his own special approach to creativity – but what is remarkable is the way in which his very modern understanding of musical creation encapsulates and draws deeply on Gregorian chant, by which he has been heavily influenced. Exceptional purity of tone is de rigueur for Gregorian chant and works derived from it, and Cappella Romana possesses such purity – along with an exceptional ability to enunciate unfamiliar words with so much clarity that listeners can easily follow the singing even without necessarily understanding what is being presented. In the case of Odes of Repentance, the music is drawn from a variety of Pärt’s creations, yet hangs together seamlessly through the beauty and evident sincerity with which Cappella Romana presents it. It should be noted, though, that this hour-and-a-quarter presentation sounds very much like a church service: the pacing is deliberate throughout, the chorus sings everything a cappella, and the music has been carefully selected to make its disparate sources come together into an overall assertion of faith and prayer for divine understanding. Only listeners who are versed in or at least thoroughly familiar with the Orthodox liturgy will find it meaningful that the CD opens with Apolytikion for the Holy Icons and concludes with Apolytikion for Saint Nicholas, but anyone coming to this recording from any spiritual direction cannot but be moved by the care and sensitivity with which the music is sung. There remain significant doctrinal differences between the Christian East and West, as is especially clear in this recording from the intensity of prayer directed at Mary, “virgin Mother of God,” in addition to lines such as ones that translate, “Now I lift my hands to you, holy martyrs, hermits, virgins, righteous ones and all the saints” – which are not typical of those used in the West. Yet to Christians with an eye and an ear for the use of music to elevate what is secular to the realm of the sacred, this sort of thing will be of far less consequence than the excellence with which Cappella Romana uses Pärt’s music to produce a convincing service focused on the hope and prayer for repentance and eventual unification with God. The very deliberate pace of the music allows the singers fully to bring forth its many beauties, but will make it difficult for those not steeped in Pärt and/or Gregorian chant to sit through the CD from start to finish. Thus, the disc is by design an offering for a limited audience – an audience that will welcome it and embrace its spirituality as well as its musicality.

     There is considerably more drama in Handel’s Israel in Egypt, which after all is labeled “A Dramatic Oratorio” and which contains many operatic elements. Jeannette Sorrell has gone out of her way to make the work even more dramatic, and thus hopefully more appealing to a contemporary audience, for her new recording with Apollo’s Fire on the AVIE label. Handel, who generally had finely honed theatrical instincts as well as a propensity for reusing effective music in new contexts (parts of Israel in Egypt were later to turn up in Messiah), somewhat erred in his original version of Israel in Egypt, which lasted more than three hours and pleased neither the secular audience nor the religious establishment – being too focused on choral material from the point of view of the former, and too churchlike for theater presentation from the viewpoint of the latter. A major issue was the extended Lamentation of the Israelites for the Death of Joseph at the work’s beginning – and that section is generally dropped in modern performances, allowing a focus on the plagues brought by God upon the Egyptians, the fleeing of the Jews from slavery, and the eventual parting of the Red Sea and destruction of Pharaoh’s warriors beneath the waves. Sorrell has done something intriguing in restoring a 16-minute version of Part I of the work, thus giving it Handel’s originally intended story arc from lamentation through disaster to ultimate triumph. But she has also done something less admirable in reducing Parts II and III, the balance of Israel in Egypt, to less than one hour, with the explicit intent of making the totality more appealing to modern listeners and their presumably reduced attention spans. The result is some very un-Handelian Handel, with entire portions of the oratorio excised, numerous portions of the music truncated, and the elimination in many places of typically Handelian ornamented repeats and other characteristic vocal flourishes. To be sure, these changes will make the work more acceptable to some audiences: even Handel aficionados sometimes find the extent of his repetitiveness wearing and wish he would get on with it a bit sooner. But Sorrell has made so many excisions and emendations that this Israel in Egypt is better thought of as a Handel/Sorrell co-production or co-composition than as a work by Handel interpreted by Sorrell. Regarded thus, as a cooperative endeavor, it is certainly effective, and the performance itself is of the highest quality by any standards. The use of period instruments is a big plus: Handel was a master at interweaving instrumental and vocal lines, and the clarity of his thinking and care of his musical construction come through much more clearly and effectively when period instruments are used. Sorrell paces the oratorio quite ably, focusing throughout on its dramatic elements, of which there are many. The chorus enunciates and emotes well, and all the soloists fulfill their roles to very good effect: sopranos Margaret Carpenter Haigh and Molly Netter, countertenor Daniel Moody, tenor Jacob Perry, and baritone Edward Vogel. The aptness of Sorrell’s adaptation of Israel in Egypt is certainly arguable: surely there could be some compromise between the 75 minutes of this version and the 180-or-so of the original. But for those who share Sorrell’s vision of making the oratorio more listenable for a less-patient contemporary audience, this will unquestionably be an inviting recording that gives listeners a welcome chance to hear and appreciate some percentage of Handel’s understanding of and flair for drama within the context of a serious Biblical story.