Today’s H&H; Is More Avant-Garde Than ‘Hallelujah’

When a group of ordinary Boston merchants who liked to sing formed the Handel & Haydn Society in 1815, Beethoven was hot and Mozart was trendy.

Decades passed. The amateur chorus grew musically musty. But since Christopher Hogwood, a world-renowned British expert in early music, took over as artistic director in 1986, the country’s oldest performing arts group has returned to its avant-garde origins.

He has breathed new life into Handel’s “Messiah” by scraping off nearly 200 years of bigger-is-better interpretation, using period instruments and following the composer’s instructions.

Last year, Hogwood mixed jazz pianist Keith Jarrett with Mozart and Prokofiev to demonstrate unexpected connections. And he would like to collaborate with such unorthodox musicians as the Talking Heads, a rock band with an intellectual bent.

“I’m interested in doing some extraordinary combinations, the sort of program that really makes the audience think,” he said during a recent interview.

Hogwood is just as faithful to the society’s Baroque and classical heritage, the music that attracted this 47-year-old scholar, harpsichordist, author and conductor in the first place.

After all, this was the group that performed the U.S. premieres of Haydn’s “The Creation” (1817), Handel’s complete “Messiah” (1818), Verdi’s “Requiem” (1878) and Bach’s “B Minor Mass” (1887).

Those were the H&H; heydays. Some time around the turn of the century the Handel & Haydn Society got stuck in the past. That’s when it stopped sending 600-singer choruses to New York City by boat. It’s reputation shriveled until it was known as little more than a Boston chorus that sang “Messiah” at Christmas.

This began to change in the late 1960s when conductor Thomas Dunn trimmed from hundreds of amateurs to a few dozen professional singers and added a small professional orchestra.

Then Hogwood arrived.

The Cambridge University musicologist, harpsichordist, scholar, author and conductor already was established as the sort of musician who would have suited the H&H; founders. In 1973, for example, he founded the Academy of Ancient Music, the first British orchestra to use instruments authentic to the Baroque and classical music it performed.

Hogwood, 47, holds to the paradoxical philosophy that what is old can be new. That’s why he favors instruments and arrangements authentic to the composer who wrote the work.

As he phrased it: “Should we put the hands back on Venus de Milo?

“My feeling is toward locating what speaks to every man. If you take on the right instruments, that music will speak more natural language.”

Hogwood’s deft mix of old and new touches everything. This month H&H; marked the 135th annual Boston performance of Handel’s “Messiah,” but performed for the first time on period instruments.

Also during December, H&H; performed at Lincoln Center, its first return to New York since the last century. The society is also taking “Messiah” to Chicago’s Orchestra Hall for a debut.

And the group has its first recording contract.

“It is a society, so it’s more than just concerts . . . we talk to our audience. The H&H; demands that we be at the cutting edge,” Hogwood said.

Thus, when the improvisational Jarrett performed, he played Mozart, who was himself a famed improviser. That concert also included Prokofiev, the neoclassical modern Russian composer who looked to Mozart for inspiration. The program illustrated the musical threads.

The public seems to like this approach, too. Its subscription list is multiplying.

It has operated in the black the past 4 years, and the 1989 budget is $1.3 million for its September to April season. That is triple the 1984 budget.

Hogwood juggles his time and place between England (where he makes his home and runs the Academy of Ancient Music), Minnesota (where he is director of music for the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra) and Sydney, where he is artistic adviser to the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

Since taking over as music director in 1986, he is quickly moving H&H; out into that world, showing that it is alive and well and living up to the tradition of its founders.

Hogwood’s goal, he said, “is to get what we are doing more defined and get it outside the confines of Boston.”