Chicago Classical Review

Four centuries of choral music was the inspiration for Music of the Baroque’s final season program led by Andrew Megill.

Those of us dealing with nonfunctional air conditioning the first humid weekend of the season got no relief at Fourth Presbyterian Church Monday night. Caught between seasons, the venue had no working AC, creating a sweltering environment for audience members and musicians alike. Yet Megill and the MOB musicians soldiered on with admirable dedication and professionalism.

One man’s ambitious four-hundred-year survey can be another man’s greatest-hits hodgepodge. But under Megill, MOB chorus director since 2022, this “Celestial Voices” program was well chosen and flowed smoothly. Brief instrumental works by Bach, Monteverdi and Caldara nicely varied the choral menu, performed by the backing septet of MOB front-desk orchestra musicians.

The ecclesiastical flavor was accented from the start by the opening processional performed with the lights out. The chorus members sang the plainchant Kyrie XI (“Orbis factor”) as they entered from the back of the darkened venue holding candles as they walked to the front and assembled on the small altar stage. 

The singers handled the dizzyingly long lines of the Kyrie from Machaut’s Messe de Notre Dame with impressive control.  Monteverdi’s “Hor che’l ciel” (from his Madrigals, Book VIII) went with operatic brilliance, Megill and the singers making a stage drama of the abrupt shifts and jumpy, unstable lines, with stellar solo contributions from tenor Alec Fore and bass Ian Morris.

While the singing was unfailingly polished and well-blended, at times in the first half one wanted something more than a hearty mezzo-forte. Andrieu’s Armes, amours, an Ockeghem Kyrie and even Bach’s motet “Komm, Jesu, komm” emerged rather bland and generalized and would have benefited from a wider dynamic range and greater expressive nuance.

Happily, the evening’s two largest works, heard after intermission, came off most successfully. They were prefaced by William Byrd’s lilting “Haec dies,” the MOB singers carrying off the joyful folk-like spirit with elan.

For Thomas Tallis’s epic Spem in alium, the 26 singers of the MOB Chorus were joined by two-dozen-members of the Bienen Contemporary/Early Vocal Ensemble. (Megill is professor and director of choral organizations at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music.)

With the house darkened again down to candlelight, the massed singers were arrayed on the high choir lofts and side aisles as well as onstage. Megill led the 40 voices  in a flowing and sumptuous performance of Tallis’s extraordinary work, keeping the massive polyphony on track and eliciting clarity and striking cohesion with a sumptuous, in-the-round sonic impact.

If the Tallis performance was the most theatrical of the evening, the deepest and most satisfying overall performance came with the concluding work, Bach’s “Jesu, meine Freude.”

The longest and most elaborate of Bach’s motets, BWV 227 is cast in 11 varied parts, centered on various aspects of the title joy in the promised deliverance of Jesus Christ. With the Bienen Ensemble again joining the MOB Chorus, there was a massive amplitude to the collective sound yet Megill pared down to the original four- and five part solo voices where necessary.

From his vigorous conducting it was clear, that this is music Megill feel strongly about. This was layered, purposeful and deeply felt Bach, details consistently illuminated, as with the  repeated “nichts” of “Es is nun nichts” (Now there is nothing). The singing of the combined choirs was imposing yet surprisingly agile and there was masterly singing by the soloists in the more intimate sections. 

The venue’s hothouse conditions were instantly dispelled upon exiting the church into the refreshing, cool air on Michigan Avenue, but the emotional intensity and spiritual gravitas of this Bach performance will linger in the memory.

Music of the Baroque opens its 2026-27 season with an all- Mozart program September 27 & 28. Jane Glover conducts Symphonies Nos. 40 and 41, and the Piano Concerto No. 27 with soloist Imogen Cooper. baroque.org

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