This brief (60 minute) DVD is a "concert" of Christmas
music by Bach, Mozart and Handel, featuring two fine soloists, Barbara
Bonney and Mathias Goerne. The pieces are all excerpts from large works
- from Bach's Christmas Oratorio, from Handel's Messiah, and others.
There is little thread holding this recital together, though the tone
of the music is similar throughout.
Barbara Bonney is very good in the Mozart, an excerpt
from the Mass in C minor. Her voice blends well with the excellent sound
of the original instruments, especially the flutes and oboes. But while
she sings well, she doesn't do any more than that - there is no special
feeling or emotion that comes across in this piece, nor in most of the
other pieces. The Bach is all competently performed, and the orchestra
gets its "solo" playing the sinfonia from the Christmas Oratorio, a
bit limply, but, again, competently.
Mathias Goerne sings his solo, from cantata 110, quite
well, but the duet with her and Bonney suffers from their voices being
drowned out by the oboes; in addition, they voices don't work well together.
This piece, which should be the high point of the performance, is uneven
and uninspiring - Bonney and Goerne seem at odds with each other, and
at odds with the instruments accompanying them.
This DVD includes a couple of pieces for a brass ensemble
- quite nice, if you like that sort of thing - and two traditional Christmas
songs performed by a children's choir. These two pieces are sung, first,
over films of people walking in the streets of a city (Freiburg), which
is quite shocking after the shots of the interiors of the magnificent
cathedral. The camera then returns to the cathedral to show the choir
singing, but one may wonder what the director had in mind.
The high point of this disc comes when Barbara Bonney
sings Handel's He shall feed his flock, from the Messiah. While not
perfect - a hint too much vibrato - her voice is well-suited for a song
like this with its jumps and long notes. She is a bit overwhelmed by
the orchestra again, unfortunately, but this is a very profound performance.
Unfortunately, the disc then ends with a performance
of the oh-too-familiar "air on a G string" by Bach, from his Orchestral
Suite in D Major. What a shame to follow the Handel with such overplayed
music, and ruin the tone that Bonney managed to achieve.
In the end, this DVD is too short, and features too
much of a mixture of different types of music to be truly interesting.
Barbara Bonney's Handel might make it worthwhile for true fans of this
music, but that's a high price to pay for just one song.
Kirk McElhearn
Freiburger Barockorchester
