An "i" can sound so different: clinking, piercing, almost aggressive in the Latin "Dixit" and immediately afterwards, in "Dominus", masked and as if ducked between the two dark sounds next door.
Later, when “in the irae” heralds the “day of anger”, other colors emerge: smoldering and threatening, flickering flickering like lava flows beneath its solidifying crust.
“Dixit dominus” - this is how George Frideric Handel's magnificent, theatrically splendid setting of the Roman psalm from 1707 begins, and the way the RIAS Chamber Choir sang it under Justin Doyle at the New Year's Concert in the Berlin Philharmonic was a dazzlingly intoxicating sound fresco - but also one such precise work on the color detail that all athletic momentum never poured the finishing touches on a single vocalization or syllable combination. This is how those important moments arose when the listener was not only swept up to the head and ears in the sound current, but also saw many details clearly and spellingly shined out in and under the floods, which only gave the deep sense of the synthesis of majesty and painful tenderness and furious anger in Handel's passionate reading of the 110thOpen up psalms.
Dramaturgical shock effect
In doing so, energy and rhythmic sharpness went through fine squaring that was possibly perfectly balanced down to the last detail. The listeners, checked in advance by the tough bureaucracy of the Corona controls - there was no getting through without at least three documents - experienced as a counterpoint and reward for the effort a joyful and risky openness that exactly matched the basic mood of this event, which was actually a "Judas Maccabäus ”and now due to the pandemic (the planned British soloists had to cancel) had to switch to a more detailed program, which nevertheless never acted as a mere replacement from the first, fresh and powerful bar in Francesco Durante's“ Magnificat ”. Because the aggressiveness brought sharpening, not flooding leveling.A dramaturgical shock effect like the sudden turn from the raging of the mechanically brutal, with an iron kick everything destructive machine in the revenge-pregnant "Judicabit" choir in the soprano-carried devotional picture idyll of the following movement is hardly to be thought more impressive than it happened here.
Not only did the main vocal pieces of the evening benefit from it - in addition to the “Dixit” and Durante's concise, almost sculptural composition, also the smaller and more peaceful Handel psalm “Nisi Dominus” - but also the purely instrumental ones, in a kind of outshone Contributions from the Academy for Early Music.
Homogeneous in itself as with the choir, fresh and hearty, plus Henrico Albicastro's Concerto grosso in G minor, Op. 7 No. 5 with elegiac-pastoral Christmas echoes in the interplay between oboes and strings: the Akamus was, as is often the case in similar constellations, the fertile soil without which nothing can grow.
On cautious soles
How such a solid yet well-balanced sound design - not least the occasional change of position of individual players revealed a well thought-out concept - can also grow into something great and hauntingly emotional, especially with the cellist Jan Freiheit and his keyboard colleagues on the organ and harpsichord in the aria “Virgam virtutis” from the “Dixit dominus”. The string instrument not only became a source of impetus and resonance space for the alto part, but also opened up its own dimension of intimate, humble and trusting looking up in hope and unrestricted confidence, conscious of a good ending, which shone into all the armed struggle and annihilation pathos of the following movements.
The fact that the singer herself, Sophie Harmsen, remained relatively neutral and, with her soprano colleague Johanna Winkel, was the most likely to gain charisma in some angry violent coloratura, was perhaps also due to the intricate dramaturgical details of Durante and Handel: not only once did the soloists have to cautiously Sneak the soles of their resting places to the microphone and then turn off again after just a few bars. After all, Andreas Wolf got along better with some massive bass accents and especially Patrick Grahl with his soft, supple and yet passionate tenor passages.
With the mezzo-soprano, however, some might have discovered a question that would have sounded almost heretical just a few decades ago, but now, at the beginning of 2022, appears to be the most natural thing in the world: If you wouldn't actually want a male voice at these points anyway, an alto as he might have done at the presumed Roman premiere? And so it was not only at these points, in rethinking your own listening experiences and apart from all the sensual pleasure of this evening, that the realization that “daring to make more progress” is not a matter of loud declarations, but the persuasiveness of what is above all emotionally stirring Example needs; then maybe one day you will just be right in the middle of it all and be amazed - not just on the concert podium.