Rameau highlights mixed Minkowski MOB debut
Paris-born conductor Marc Minkowski founded the early music ensemble Les Musiciens du Louvre in 1982, when he was 19, and remains their artistic director to this day. That ensemble played a prominent role in the French baroque revival of the late 1980s through the 1990s, and so it was both fitting and expected that music of Rameau should highlight Minkowski’s Chicago debut, leading the Music of the Baroque Orchestra at Harris Theater on Saturday night.
Les Boréades was Rameau’s final opera, completed in 1764, just shy of what would have been the composer’s 81st birthday. Its libretto tells the story of a queen, Alphise, who by custom must marry a son of the wind god Boreas, but instead she is in love with the mortal Abaris. An angered Boreas abducts Alphise, and Abaris, helped by Apollo and Polyhymnia (and his own magic arrow), must prevail over adversity to rescue her. It is a masonically inflected tale that anticipates The Magic Flute, and things work out as well for Alphise and Abaris as they do for Pamina and Tamino.
Saturday’s Suite from Les Boréades comprised eight dances and other instrumental selections from the opera, giving a kaleidoscopic view of the “French Bach” at the late height of his powers. Minkowski’s deep affinity for this repertoire was apparent in vivid readings that captured the opera’s fantasy and windblown drama.
The opening “Entrée des Peuples” was gallantly inflected, and the ensuing hunting episode cantered with propulsive aggression. Flutists Mary Stolper and Alyce Johnson swirled acrobatically in a number of blustery movements, with bassoonists Lewis Kirk and Hanna Sterba providing nimble counterpoint in the Gavottes. Time stood still with the limpidly falling lines of the “Entrée de Polymnie,” a glowing air that Minkowski led with a meditative poise.
The balance of the brief program was a more mixed affair.
Handel’s Concerto Grosso in F Major (Op. 3, no. 4) opened the evening. Minkowski’s conducting can have a demonstrative, almost pedantic style, often defaulting to large, loopy gestures. He made a spirited impression, but the musical results could feel one-note, and such was the case in the Handel. There were minor ensemble issues throughout, and lines too often lacked direction. An exception was principal oboist Jennet Ingle’s elevated aria in the Andante, which was offered with thoughtful nuance above a supple bed of strings.
The evening concluded with Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 (“Jupiter”). Here again Minkowski brought great enthusiasm but little discipline. His approach to the Allegro vivace movement was emphatic, but often inattentive to balance and the overall motion of Mozart’s writing. The Andante began with a serene inwardness, but Minkowski leaned into its agitated passages in a manner that felt out of scope with the rest of the movement, which had no shortage of rough edges.
The Menuetto was unobjectionable, adorned with coy piping from Ingle in the Trio. The Molto allegro provided some late fireworks, fizzing as Minkowski and colleagues assertively dispatched its famously inventive counterpoint. The musicians seemed to revel collectively in the denouement when the movement’s five motives sounded together in the glorious coda.
As an encore, Minkowski reprised the “Entrée de Polymnie” from the first half, a welcome opportunity to hear Rameau’s luminous and neglected music performed live once more.
The program will be repeated 3 p.m. Sunday at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie. baroque.org
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