VOICES OF ANTIQUITY, REAWAKENED
Historically informed performance is no longer a specialty. Period practice vocabulary has entered the mainstream, influencing how modern orchestras perform baroque repertoire. Yet Emmanuelle Haïm‘s recent Los Angeles Philharmonic program—Handel’s Dixit Dominus and Bach’s Magnificat—had more to offer than expertly researched performance practice. It was baroque music with life in its blood, a resurrection not merely of sound but of spirit.
Haïm, the founder/director of Le Concert d’Astrée (who provided the chorus for the evening), has the gift of making a modern symphony orchestra agile and charged. The LA Phil musicians, playing on modern instruments, adapted with unexpected flexibility, their sound shaped to baroque sensibilities without loss of the richness of modern tone.
Handel’s Dixit Dominus, composed in 1707, during his Roman sojourn, doesn’t sound like the work of an inexperienced composer trying to impress his hosts. It sounds like a shot across the bow. At 22, fresh from Hamburg and already imbibing the passion of the Italian style, Handel composed a setting of Psalm 110 that is almost reckless in its ardor. The Roman aristocracy, barred from producing opera by papal decree, directed their theatrical inclinations into sacred music, and Handel responded with something that overflows with operatic vitality. The double-choir texture, the relentless impetus, the harmonic audacity—it’s sacred music that can barely keep its collar on.
The work played out like a liturgical fever dream. The opening chorus announces itself in fugal snarls, voices entering close together like fighters jumping into a melee. Rhythms are jagged, restless, refusing to resolve where you expect. Even the lyrical movements—”Tecum principium,” “De torrente”—don’t offer much in the way of repose. They shimmer, yes, but there’s tension buzzing beneath. By the time the choir reaches “Conquassabit capita,” music is no longer devotional—it’s apocalyptic. Handel doesn’t so much set the psalm as blow it up. Dixit Dominus is not a meditation on religion. It’s a dramatization of God’s power, and Handel delivers it with the theatrical panache of a man who already knew he would not be staying in Rome for very much longer.
In Dixit Dominus, Haïm drew crisp textures from the strings, the articulation razor-sharp but never brittle. Rhythms had bite but there was warmth in phrasing, a sense of breathing space amidst the drive. Vibrato wasn’t prohibited, but used in shades—sometimes stark, sometimes passionate. The modern sound of the orchestra was at its most thrilling in Conquassabit capita, where Haïm unleashed a whirlwind of controlled turbulence, energy surging but never spinning out of control.
Her soloists thrived in this balance of historical insight and presence. Soprano Emöke Baráth navigated Tecum principium with silvery ease, embellishments unrolling as if freshly improvised. Countertenor Iestyn Davies brought a subdued, ethereal intensity, his voice seeming to float above the ensemble. Eva Zaïcik‘s more deeply-timbred soprano offered contrast, while tenor Lunga Eric Hallam and bass-baritone Krešimir Stražanac rooted the performance in unshakeable authority.
The Concert d’Astrée chorus didn’t just perform—they created something alive. It was like walking into a painting that breathes: full of color, detail, and feeling. Each voice had its own shade, its own weight, but together they moved as one—fluid, exact, and deeply felt. Nothing sounded forced. Their phrasing seemed to rise out of the music naturally, and their attention to dynamics brought the Baroque textures into sharp focus without sounding polished to death.
In “Dominus a dextris tuis,” they came out swinging—tight rhythms, fierce momentum, and just the right touch of bite. It felt like the air thickened. Then came “De torrente in via bibet,” and the room seemed to exhale. The sound pulled inward, delicate and low-lit, almost like a secret being passed around. That shift in energy was striking.
It’s not just that they sing well. It’s the way they hold both the style and the soul of the music at once. The result is something rare: historically aware, emotionally true, and completely arresting.
What distinguished Haïm was her refusal to turn baroque idioms into a museum-piece set of strictures. The music danced along, its natural rise and fall alive and breathing. She conducted with her hands and with her whole body, shaping phrases with a kinetic energy that the orchestra responded to instinctively. The result was baroque performance as living rhetoric, full of gesture and meaning without slipping into pastiche.
If Dixit Dominus is a storm, Magnificat is a kaleidoscope. Composed for Bach’s first Christmas in Leipzig in 1723 and revised in 1733 into the more streamlined D major version we know today, the Magnificat is small but vast in emotional range. Latin liturgy through counterpoint and contrast. Every movement is a world in itself—arias, choruses, duets—and yet, together, they add up to something architectural. Bach doesn’t merely set the words; he interrogates them. The lowly are lifted, the mighty are cast down, and he enriches it with harmonic daring and rhythmic surprise.
In Magnificat Haïm once more demonstrated that authenticity is a matter of intention, not imitation. Trumpets, bright and ceremonial, provided luster without the wobble that often characterizes period instruments. Timpani, struck by harder mallets than one would use in later eras, didn’t just add gravitas—they defined, punctuating Bach’s structure rather than muddying it.
“Magnificat anima mea” burst open with light. The chorus didn’t ease into it—they lifted the roof. Every syllable landed clean and bright, slicing through the space like a sunbeam.
Then came “Et misericordia,” and the mood softened. The lines moved like slow-turning water, full of warmth and quiet detail. Voices curled around each other, tender and reflective, as if the music were breathing.
And just when things felt settled, “Fecit potentiam” hit. Sudden. Forceful. Every entrance was razor-sharp, the sound crackling with urgency. It didn’t just announce power—it became it.
I was quite impressed by how Haïm coaxed historically informed phrasing from the LA Phil players whose training is in 19th-century symphonic tradition. There was no feeling of stiff “authenticity,” no forced artifice. Rather, she guided them to find the music’s natural form—the tapering of a note, the built-in dance of a triple meter, the rise and fall of a phrase. It wasn’t about gut strings or ancient bows; it was about coaxing those new instruments to speak with the same rhetorical force as their old counterparts.
In a musical world that often draws a hard line between period ensembles and modern orchestras, Haïm offered a different route—one that cuts through that binary. For her, authenticity isn’t a matter of instruments or technique. It’s about communication. A baroque violin may sound different from a modern one, but what matters is the message it carries, the emotion it sustains. As she lifted her arms for the final Amen, time seemed to fold in on itself. This wasn’t a reenactment. It wasn’t a reinvention. It was music—present, urgent, and unmistakably alive.
