Chicago Classical Review

Celebrations of Bach’s music are as innumerable as the stars, as they should be.

Yet for some reason concerts devoted to music of Handel—apart from the inescapable Messiah—are less thick on the ground. Considering his inexhaustible fount of melody and prolific achievements across several genres, too much of Handel’s music remains unexplored, at least on the local scene.

All credit then to the Handel Week Festival. Co-founded by artistic director Dennis E. Northway and baritone Philip Kraus, the annual Oak Park event is currently marking its 26th season.

This year’s edition kicked off Sunday afternoon at Pilgrim Congregational Church with a program that mixed sacred solo cantatas with Handel organ concertos. (The festival continues Sundays at the same venue through March 2.)

Four cantatas for solo soprano may have been a bit too much of a good thing, and the program might have been varied more effectively by trading out one of the cantatas for a Handel trio sonata or concerto grosso.

That said, Josefien Stoppelenburg proved a worthy exponent of Handel’s music in three sacred cantatas (O qualis de coelo sonus, Salve Regina, and Coelestis dum spirit aura). At times, her tone turned a bit glassy in the highest reaches and some of the more spiritually inward sections were rather generalized in expression. 

Yet the soprano largely showed herself an impressive Handelian–singing with full tone, flexibility, and idiomatic Baroque style with the agility to sail through Handel’s coloratura hurdles in the concluding Alleluias.

Apart from some fractionally overdone pauses, conductor Northway was a supportive accompanist. He led the dozen-member orchestra of top local freelancers capably, though occasional ensemble lapses surfaced, as with a wayward solo cello obbligato in O qualis.

Ironically, it was Bach’s music that provided the most successful overall performance with his church cantata, Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen, which concluded the afternoon.

Henry Griffin, the festival’s young conducting intern, led a notably alert and well-balanced performance of Bach’s BWV 51. The festive rejoicing of the framing movements proved especially vibrant and engaging with Stoppelenburg’s fine vocalism complemented by Ryan Berndt’s stylish trumpet playing.

The vocal works were spelled by Handel’s Organ Concertos in B flat and F major. 

David White was a game soloist and the piping chamber organ proved ideally scaled for these works. The organist had a few passing digital slips and fitful moments of rhythmic insecurity but the requisite Handel spirit was there. White brought out the ingenuity of Handel’s music, wittily underling the cuckoo and nightingale onomatopoeia in the F major concerto.

Griffin drew focused and vital playing from the ensemble in the concerto as well as the Salve Regina.

Handel Week Festival continues February 23 with music for mezzo-soprano and harpsichord, and March 2 with the oratorio L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato. Concerts take place 3 p.m. at Pilgrim Congregational Church in Oak Park. handelweek.org

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