You can call it tenacity: Justin Doyle and his RIAS Chamber Choir needed three attempts before, after two corona-related implosions, they were finally able to decorate Berlin's New Year's Day with Handel's "Judas Maccabaeus".

And after the performance, it became clearer what might be the special attraction for the conductor and his ensemble of this oratorio, which was once enormously popular but is now only rarely performed.

There is a strange discrepancy: Thomas Morell's libretto for the play, which premiered in 1747, deals exclusively with military conflicts between threat and triumph, battles, patriotic prayers and celebrations of victory - a martial world of self-empowerment that has its historical background in the conflicts between the English crown and the insurgents Schotten had, but seems obscure these days for very good reasons.

No love story, no diversion in any direction.

One should realize that the catchy “See, the conqu'ring” (in its German Advent adaptation “Tochter Zion, rejoice”) sounds to a triumphal march, in which, according to the text, the head and hands of one of the defeated Opponents are carried and exhibited.

But Handel now: He composed one of his happiest, most relaxed and heartfelt pieces of music for this horrific spectacle, ignoring blood, stench and entrails, transcending the crude events into a song of redeemed humanity.

You can definitely describe this as willful blindness and aesthetic opportunism, but perhaps it would be better to say: Here is someone who is not interested in the external symbolism and hardly the cruelty of the mutual slaughter itself, but who primarily pursues the questions of what the war also has in common makes the one left behind.

The leaden oppression of the introductory mourning scene, the shattering loneliness of the soprano lament aria accompanied by only a few continuo instruments in the second part, but then also the relaxed relief:

What can sweeten war and war rumors in music

War and struggle for existence, mass incantation and cracking patriotism, but not as a chamber play in terms of format, but in spirit: It is striking that in this martial plot timpani, brass and wind instruments are used extremely sparingly.

The Academy for Early Music, after many joint ventures meanwhile wonderfully attuned to the peculiarities of the RIAS Chamber Choir, corresponded with a soft, sometimes even fragrant and velvety sound aura.

Anyone who knew the ensemble in earlier decades with its angular roughness – which was certainly attractive at the time – will be amazed at the seamless homogeneity and fine tuning that has now crystallized.

On this evening it was particularly effective and supported the concept of the conductor Doyle, who never led his choir in a blocky boom, but on the contrary in lyrical, occasionally almost impressionistic transitions and nuances: sadness or joy, never cries of pain or howls of triumph.

One almost had the impression of a great effortlessness - which of course failed in the assessment of the subject, but was nonetheless delightful in the atmospheric effect.

The four soloist roles were all British and accordingly, in keeping with the conception, offered the local school of slim, straight, low-vibrato singing, intensive instead of extensive and free from excessive exaltation.

With Anna Dennis' brittle, glassy soprano, especially at the beginning of the evening, this sometimes turned into a certain dryness.

But her timbre already had a special appeal there and then, growing from scene to scene, in the many duets with her mezzo partner Helen Charlston, whose completely different vocal profile - not particularly voluminous, but warmly comprehensive, noble and supple - blends in with that of the soprano even with identical phrases such as thesis and antithesis.

A certain androgynous charisma of the deeper voice also made this cooperation and opposition obvious in terms of content,

What British Voices Do

Among the parts of the oratorio with clearly male connotations, Henry Waddington's noble, robust bass acted comparatively easily, because as a priest and admonisher he didn't have to be much more than just that: noble and robust.

The clearly more difficult task lay with Benjamin Hulett, who, as the title hero, occasionally has to act as the cheerleader and triumphant.

Because the tenor also gave his Judas Maccabaeus traits of a thoughtful introspection and a certain rational calculation, the many coloratura-spiked arias from the singer's fanfare-like, youthful, bright vocal profile never suggested a macho deadbeat.