Review of Handel's Solomon

Tuesday 21st April 2009
Guinness Choir and Orchestra / Milne
St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin
Michael Dungan

Solomon, composed in 1748, came about seven oratorios after Messiah and fourth from the end. In three, upstaged acts gives it a portrait chiefly of the Old Testament figure of King Solomon but also of the Golden Age over which he presided.

Aside from the central Act II episode - the famous story of how Solomon proposes cutting a baby in half to resolve a maternity dispute - there is little external drama or narrative. So as a piece of music it is concerned with pomp and pageantry, rejoicing and adulation. Handel specialist Winton Dean argues that Handel intended - and his audiences appreciated - a deliberate analogy with England's reigning sovereign of the time, George II.

So how exactly are we to take two and a half hours of empire, prosperity and monarchy here in our recession-battered republic? Easy - it's a Handel in top gear.

Crowning the Guinness Choir's welcome presentation of a great oratorio that has been sidelined by the perennial popularity of Messiah was mezzo-soprano Alison Browner. She sang the central "trouser role" of Solomon with default settings of an exquisite calibre, her invisible multi-tasking making every note beautiful while investing each word with meaning.

There were fine offerings from soprano Olive Simpson as the Queen of Sheba, her ease and sweetness growing the higher the register, and from bass John Milne, noble but unmannered as the priestly Levite. Tenor Christopher Brown and soprano Róisín O'Grady were polished, clear and stylish their solos, with O'Grady bringing an additional element of drama as one of the maternity-case mothers.

Interestingly, the other mother was sung with great dynamism and musical shaping by soprano Nicola Mahoney, but with a vocal colour laced with timbres from a wholly different style of singing, perhaps jazz or pop.

Overseeing all the pomp and emotion was conductor David Milne who, though his strings couldn't always deliver perfect cohesion, drew from his players great animation and character, yielding more than the sum of their parts.

Likewise the Guinness Choir itself, while losing definition and energy to weak consonants, gave Milne all the character he sought, above all in the great choruses of celebration.

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