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He was born in Germany, in 1685. His reputation began to develop during the six years he spent as a young man in Italy, where he was hailed as “the dear Saxon.” But it was the final five decades of his life that unequivocally established George Frideric Handel, settled throughout that time in London, as a major master.

Just how major? Well, Ludwig van Beethoven, not a man much given to sprinkling compliments, declared of Handel: “To him I would bow the knee.” He was, Beethoven declared, “the master of us all: the greatest effects with the simplest means.”

From March 11 to 27, music lovers in the Seattle area – doubtless joined by visitors from all over – will have what might well be their best opportunity ever to test the accuracy of that judgement. The American Handel Festival is coming to town.

Founded in 1981, the American Handel Society presented the festival for its first years at the University of Maryland, but it has taken to the road since the death of prime-mover Howard Serwer in 2000. We’re indebted for its landing in Seattle to musicologist Marty Ronish, a former student of Serwer’s who moved here in 2007 from National Public Radio in Washington, DC, and who has been the dynamo organizing this year’s event.

“Normally,” Ronish says, “the festival is a four-day scholarly conference with a couple of concerts, but Seattle had different ideas. Every single person I talked to wanted to be a part of it, and I figured who was I to say no?” So this time, as well as the conference and two workshops–one of them offering the opportunity to sing Handel choruses for yourself–the festival will stretch over 17 days. Included are no fewer than 30 concerts, offering a liberal choice from the composer’s huge output, which includes 42 operas, 29 oratorios, more than 120 cantatas, trios, and duets, and chamber music for various instruments, as well as arias, odes, and serenatas, 16 organ concertos, and two substantial sets of orchestral concertos. Most of the events will take place in the First Hill neighborhood, within walking distance from the Sorrento Hotel, which has provided both moral and material support in the course of the preparations.

One of the most significant features of this Handel festival is that it will not include a performance of Messiah. That masterpiece kept Handel’s repute alive for many years when the rest of his music was virtually a closed book, and it’s still–along with the delightful Water Music–what people tend to think of first when his name is mentioned. But in the view of this critic at least, the emphasis does the composer a disservice, for his catalog of works includes many that are perhaps even greater. The reason for this, I think, is that Handel’s genius resides before anything else in his ability, through purely musical means, to create rivetingly real and moving human beings. In Messiah, the vocal soloists are just that–simply vocal soloists; they do not portray specific characters.

So I am especially delighted that the charming and picturesque chamber opera Acis and Galatea will have a staged performance in Town Hall on March 25, and that one of the finest of Handel’s oratorios, Esther, will be heard the following day in the acoustically glorious St. James Cathedral. One of Seattle’s own leading early-music performers, Stephen Stubbs (who rose to international stature while living in Germany for 30 years before coming back to his home town), collaborates with Paul O’Dette and stage director Gilbert Blin in the visiting Boston Early Music Festival’s Acis, and then conducts his own Pacific Musicworks and the Tudor Choir in Esther, with soloists Shannon Mercer, Ross Hauck, Charles Robert Stephens, Zachary Wilder, Catherine Webster, and Matthew White.

Julianne Baird entrances Gallery concertgoers

Special to The Gathering Note on March 17, 2011

By Philippa Kiraly

I first heard soprano Julianne Baird singing Baroque arias around a quarter century ago. I thought her voice was perfect then, but now, maturity has added more depth to a rich purity of sound making hearing her an experience not readily forgotten.

Baird was performing with Gallery Concerts at Queen Anne Christian Church Saturday and Sunday in the opening weekend of this month’s Handel Festival. Together with harpsichordist Jillon Stoppels Dupree, violinist Tekla Cunningham and gamba player Margriet Tindemans, and a delightful lecture prior to the concert by George Bozarth, the concert gave a fine sampling of Handel’s oratorical and operatic activities punctuated by instrumental works.

Baird sang arias in English from the oratorios “Joshua” and “Semele,” including from the former the best known of the works she sang, “O! Had I Jubal’s Lyre,” and others from the operas “Radamisto,” Rodelinda,” and Lotario.” These are just a sprinkling from the more than 40 operas and 20 oratorios which came from Handel’s fertile mind, though many may have had arias recycled from previous works.
It was a fascinating juxtaposition to have heard, Friday, Handel and contemporary arias sung at the SSO’s “Songs of Cleopatra” program by soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian, and then Baird two days later: very different voices, each persuasive in the literature.

The immediate impression created by Baird, was the ease with which she sang. These arias are florid, fast and complex, and range all over the map vocally and dynamically.

Baird accomplished the long melismatic runs and the trills of variable speeds like a hummingbird’s hoverings, sounding so relaxed she could give her all to the emotional content.

Perhaps her most memorable performance was her second aria, “”O, Sleep, Why Dost Thou Leave Me?” from “Semele.” Anyone who suffers from insomnia could have related to the anguish she portrayed in Handel’s exquisite music.

Read the article here.

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