EW’S GUIDE TO THE OREGON BACH FESTIVAL 2011
Appear and Inspire
R,” BUT HE MAKES MUSICIANS SMILE
MATTHEW HALLS MAY BE A “FRUSTRATED SINGER,”
W
hen Matthew Halls arrived
in Colorado in early June to
begin rehearsals for the Central
City Opera’s Amadigi di Gaula, a North
American premiere of one of Handel’s
operas, he got lightheaded from the
altitude.
He should maybe get used to it.
His home base in London sits at sea
level, of course, but this 37-year-old British
conductor is now a high-fl ying Baroque
specialist, founder and artistic director
of the red-hot England-based Retrospect
Ensemble, former artistic director of
the King’s Consort, accomplished opera
conductor and, as his agent’s website says,
a specialist in all music Germanic.
Add to it that he’s an Oxford-educated
former cathedral organist, an expert
harpsichord player and what he calls a
somewhat frustrated singer (“I have a deep
desire to still be singing,” he says, noting
that his instrument isn’t quite as strong as
he’d like it to be for performance-level
singing), and Halls starts to look like what
those circling the Bach Festival have said
for a while now: He’s one of the potential
successors to the artistic director position
when Helmuth Rilling retires.
Not that anyone wants to push founder
and Artistic Director Rilling out, least of all
Halls, he says. “The only thing I’ve heard
about [the idea of me as a successor] is
from what’s been published in the press,”
he says. “In the short term, my job is to
come to Oregon this year and make some
exciting musical performances.”
Those performances begin with a non-
musical gig, a free “Let’s Talk” program
at noon July 5 at the Hult’s Studio space
down by the Jacobs Gallery. There, he’s
set to discuss his July 7 concert, titled “In
Praise of St. Cecilia,” with music by Henry
Purcell, Benjamin Britten and Georg
Friedrich Handel.
When he started talking with OBF
Executive Director John Evans about
conducting a concert at the festival, Halls
says, they chatted about the 2011 season
theme of In Praise of Women. Halls
came up with the idea of combining three
specifi c pieces in a program devoted to St.
Cecilia. “They’re so contrasted, but they’re
dealing with the same subject matter,” he
says. Evans, originally from Wales, and
d
Halls share a much more vast knowledge
ge
of Cecilia works than most U.S. musicians
ns
would imagine; it was long the custom
m
in the U.K. for poets and composers to
create odes to the third century martyr who
o
became the patron saint of music.
Purcell’s “Welcome to all the
he
pleasures” is an ode to Cecilia written to
a text by Christopher Fishburn in 1683,
3,
when British musicians and the royal court
rt
had recently begun public celebrations for
or
her saint’s day on Nov. 22 each year. That
at
tradition had not ended when Britten wrote
te
his “Hymn to St. Cecilia,” from a poem
m
by W.H. Auden, between 1940 and 1942.
2.
Despite the hardship of WWII and the
he
challenge of having the fi rst section of his
is
work confi scated by customs inspectors
rs
in N.Y., Britten rewrote and fi nished the
he
piece, and it premiered on his birthday, St.
t.
Cecilia’s Day, 1942.
The Handel, possibly the most well
ll
known of the St. Cecilia works on this
is
program, comes from 1697 texts by y
John Dryden. Handel wrote the piece for
or
performance on St. Cecilia’s Day, 1739.
That’s quite a mix of years and
d
composers (and texts), and Halls enjoys
ys
the challenge of the staging. “We’ll begin
n
with the Purcell, which uses quite reduced
d
forces, and then move to Britten with a mix
x
— and then to Handel, with everybody but
ut
the kitchen sink onstage,” he says with a
laugh.
The lyrical, musical response to poetry
ry
charms Halls as well. “Writing about St.
t.
Cecilia, poets have always been so colorful
ul
in their language,” he says. He’s thinking
g
particularly of Britten’s musical setting for
or
Auden’s words. “If you are a composer
er
setting the text, you’re going to have a fi eld d
day with collages of choral sound worlds,”
,”
he says.
Despite his experience playing Bach on
n
the keyboard, Halls says that as a conductor,
r,
he thinks like a singer. “I love fi nding the
he
right shapes for the music,” he says. “As
As
soon as you start thinking about music
ic
vocally, it’s different because the keyboard
rd
has limited means to shape the dynamic,
c,
but things like bowed instruments, oboes
es
by Suzi Steffen
and singers have a massive range of
dynamic possibilities.”
The July 7 concert starts at 7:30 pm
at the Hult. After his talk on July 5,
however, Halls also guest conducts one
day of the Discovery Series, focusing on
Bach Cantata 80, one of Helmuth Rilling’s
favorites, better known to Protestants,
especially Lutherans, in the U.S. as “A
mighty Fortress is Our God.”
Halls also gives the Portland-area OBF
fans a chance to see him at work when
he conducts the Handel St. Cecilia again
on July 9, as the fi rst part of the fi nal
Portland concert, 7:30 pm at the Arlene
Schnitzer Concert Hall (aka the Schnitz),
which concludes with Rilling conducting
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
Despite his travels (the list of European
and Asian opera and concert halls he’s
seen is frighteningly impressive), Halls has
never been to Oregon before. He’s happy
to say good things about the Bach Festival,
however. “The singers I’ve spoken to are
unanimous in their praise for what happens
at this festival,” he says. “They describe
it as a melting pot of creativity, academic
ideas and performances.”
Though he’s in Colorado
right up through the fi rst
half of the Bach Festival,
he’s looking forward
to his arrival in
Eugene. “This brings
exciting possibilities,”
he says. “I’ve heard
that it’s absolutely
wonderful. I can’t
wait to get
there.” ◆
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