Bella Voce refreshes the mind and spirit with Baroque Christmas program
There are countless choices for seasonal concerts to provide sustenance this time of year. Give credit to Bella Voce for going beyond the usual holiday-music suspects in “Christmas with the Baroque Masters,” a nicely varied and thoughtful program that provided musical warmth on a frigid Sunday evening at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Evanston.
Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Midnight Mass for Christmas may have been the marquee work on the lineup, but the shorter preceding items proved no less rewarding under the alert yet flexible conducting of artistic director Andrew Lewis.
The Madison Bach Musicians proved simpatico partners for Lewis’s dozen singers. The Wisconsin-based ensemble delivered graceful continuo support as needed and vital yet expressive playing on period instruments in the larger works.
Music of Heinrich Schütz framed the first half. If some of the male singers didn’t sound entirely warmed up in his lilting “Ein Kind ist uns geboren” (A child is born to us), the full ensemble put across an exuberant performance of Schütz’s buoyant “Hodie Christus natus est” (Today Christ is born), the spiritual joy and strikingly free part-writing put across with polished vocalism and infectious verve.
With soprano soloist Kirsten Hedegaard placed opposite the choir near the front of the church, the question-and response style of Guillaume Bouzignac’s “Noe! pastores, canticum novum” was vividly presented, the antiphonal writing and theatrical style seeming to point the way forward to Bach’s Passions and Handel’s oratorios a century later.
The Madison Bach Musicians got their turn in the spotlight with two selections. Trever Stephenson, founder and artistic director, was a graceful soloist in Handel’s Organ Concerto No. 6 (Op. 4), though the high, flutey registration of his chamber organ seemed a bit soft and fitfully undefined in the resonant acoustic.
No complaints about the performance of Corelli’s Concerto Grosso in G minor, Op. 6, no. 8, the most celebrated of all Christmas string concertos. Led by concertmaster Kangwon Lee Kim, the Madison musicians brought warm tone and ensemble unity to the gently varied movements, providing the concluding Pastorale with an apt sense of Nativity serenity.
As always, Bella Voce’s program notes were a model of intelligent presentation with complete texts and translations and scholarly yet approachable notes by Lewis. One wee suggestion: it would be helpful to have individual movements indicated for works such as the Handel and Corelli concertos.
If ever there was a Baroque composer richly deserving of revival it surely is Isabella Leonarda (1620-1704), whose music Bella Voce first presented last year in an “Expanding the Canon” program. A nun who entered the convent at 16 and lived there to 84, Leonarda was also a prolific composer, publishing twenty collections of music in several genres.
Leonarda’s Magnificat, Op. 19, is an extraordinary work. The composer imbued Mary’s hymn of praise with a fervent spirituality and creative audacity that leaps off the page—adventurous harmonies, quickly shifting meters and tempos, and female voices ascending higher and higher to thrilling effect. Lewis led a dynamic and exhilarating performance that makes one eager to hear more of Leonarda’s oeuvre.
And so on to Charpentier’s Messe de minuit pour Noël. Charpentier famously drew upon popular French carols (noëls) for his thematic material in this work. But rather than a mere suite or pastiche, he artfully crafted the music for voices and chamber orchestra into a genuine liturgical mass setting with carol melodies that would have had an almost subliminal effect on French audiences of the day.
Lewis drew out the concluding Agnus Dei a bit too lovingly yet, that apart, the conductor led a vigorous and effective performance of Charpentier’s Yuletide confection, well-blended and flexible in tempos while maintaining momentum and dance-like rhythmic snap.
Nearly every Bella Voce member had a solo opportunity to shine and each singer excelled in their spotlight moments. The pastoral element was made manifest by the two recorders whose warm, pastoral sounds virtually personified the Nativity essence of the music.
In a world of countless Messiahs and lightweight holiday concerts, kudos to Andrew Lewis, Bella Voce and colleagues for offering a smart, discerning program that managed to be as rewarding for the mind as refreshing for the spirit this time of year.
Bella Voce offers “Polyphony Camp,” a weekend of choral workshops February 14-15, 2026. bellavoce.org
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