Handel: Messiah (Concert Review - The Independent on Sunday, 2000)

St John's Smith Square seemed an unlikely setting for anything but the most genteel of performances but conductor Stephen Layton managed to balance gentility with theatricality in Polyphony's annual Messiah. The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment played superbly, with hail-storm percussiveness in But who may abide, veiled calm in the Pastoral Symphony, blunt aggression in the scourging, and burnished vibrato in the rich, dense cadences of the choral movements. Polyphony, whose sopranos are young enough to be the basses' daughters, gave a lovely, bright sound (though the over-enthusiastic tenors sounded edgy) with nicely shaped phrasing and neat diction. Soprano Emma Kirkby, tenor Mark Padmore and bass David Wilson Johnson were joined by William Towers; a young counter-tenor with glowing high notes and a clever way with words. Padmore sang Comfort Ye with supreme eloquence, raged his way through Thou shalt break them, and excelled in the stark desolation of Behold and see. Kirkby shaped enchanting phrases with her small, perfectly focused voice, decorating the lean lines of her slow arias with effortless curlicues. Wilson Johnson - a natural Handelian - gave a tour-de-force performance, moving his formidable voice around the twists and turns of Why do the nations with remarkable agility.

As delightful as it was, none of the above was anything less than you might expect. The interesting part of this Messiah was Layton's stylish conducting - an imaginatively paced account that showed how deeply he had thought about the Messiah and how clear his personal vision of it was. Part one fell into three distinct scenes - prophecy, nativity, celebration - giving a clear narrative sweep and lending each movement extra rhythmic impetus through the dramatic contextualisation. The same approach worked beautifully throughout part three but couldn't make sense of the swathing cuts in part two. The fact that Layton's dramatic intentions failed to work in one part should not detract from the fact that he is clearly a conductor with something new to bring to Messiah.

Anna Picard