Last night I sat in Avery Fisher Hall in New York with a good friend and over two thousand other souls, listening to The New Philharmonic and the extraordinary Westminster Choir perform Handel’s ‘Messiah’ under the very accomplished baton of Gary Thor Wedow. I make a point of hearing Handel’s masterpiece every Christmas season (but have also heard it at Easter as well, bien sur). Though the NY Phil performance may have not been the best Messiah of my life - I found it a melange between authentic performance techniques and a somewhat symphonic feel to the interpretation - it had its many sublime and powerful moments. And, as always, it was simply such a profound pleasure to be hearing one the great cornerstones of Western art. And there was a splendid sense of communal experience in the hall; of gathering together away from the pressure of outside life and spending almost three hours engrossed in this immense musical reflection on forces larger than us, and on the nature of storytelling that is not just an essential component of faith, but of human discourse. Speaking as an agnostic, you do not have to be a believer to be enveloped in the spell that Handel weaves. You simply have to be a questioning individual, and one who perhaps also sees that art is a form of divinity that lifts us out of the humdrum, the prosaic, the veil of tears - and reminds us that we must somehow transcend banality and guard our sense of wonder amidst all else that life throws at us.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 15:17:11 +0000
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