TV Reviews : A Baroque Duet From Battle and Marsalis

During the late Baroque period, there was quite a rage for arias with trumpet obbligato, pieces generally of joyful and highly competitive brilliance. These form the repertory rationale for “Kathleen Battle and Wynton Marsalis: Baroque Duet,” airing tonight on PBS’ “Great Performances” series (9 p.m. on KCET Channel 28 and PBS Channel 15, 8 p.m. on KVCR Channel 24).

There are some great performances here, but understand that purely musical ones are relegated to the last 15 minutes of this 90-minute bio-documentary from Peter Gelb and Albert Maysles. Battle and Marsalis have an album of this material coming out soon on Sony Classical, and this video from Battle’s management company is in many ways one long promotion.

But it is an often endearing shill. The opening portion of the show involves rehearsing for the disc, followed later by scenes from the recording sessions that bring both singer and trumpeter together with coaches. Marsalis throughout is ostentatiously humble, worried about his intonation and awed by Battle. The soprano, for her part, is endlessly amused and supportive.

We are also taken on extended biographical detours, first returning with Battle to sing an Easter service in her hometown of Portsmouth, Ohio, and then sitting in with Marsalis at a jazz rehearsal and performance, including segments with his father and brothers. The relaxed intimacy of this roots exposition may be an illusion--the camera is always in someone’s face, friends and relatives spared no more than the stars--but it is a believable one.

Finally, we get complete performances of pieces we have heard in rehearsal and recording snippets: Bach’s “Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen” with Handel’s “Let the Bright Seraphim,” both familiar, and Handel’s exquisitely haunted “Eternal Source,” which shows this combination capable of lyric introspection as well as triumph and jubilation. These are presented in pseudo-concert form, the camera lovingly circling around Battle and Marsalis, quite remote from John Nelson and the accompanying St. Luke’s Chamber Orchestra.

Battle sounds at her brightest and best, radiantly nimble, while Marsalis supplies burnished, pliant work that reflects the careful ensemble so conspicuously honed in the previous portions of the video. Sight and sound in this synthetic concert seem suspiciously unsynchronized, however. In the recording segment, there is casual mention of the common practice of stitching together the best passages from various takes--Marsalis’ reservations about his tone are also dismissed with assurances that engineering can change that--and similar tinkering seems apparent here.