A Classic, Re-Imagined, Thrills Anew

Bach’s Mass in B Minor is a work of art that hands out epiphanies as generously as any in Western culture, especially in the transforming power of its final prayer for peace, Dona Nobis Pacem. In a great performance (even in just a pretty good performance), chorus, audience and music can all seem connected in the glow of humanity.

The performance Thursday night that Andrew Parrott, the noted British specialist in period practice, conducted with the Philharmonia Baroque at the Irvine Barclay Theatre took none of this for granted, however. Parrott’s historical research has convinced him that the essence of the B-Minor Mass is not where we have always found it, in the communal power of inspiring music sung by massed voices. Bach, he suggests, had a single singer to a part, the choral sections assumed by the same singers who handled the solos.

Indeed, Parrott explained in a lecture before the performance how he was put off by the overly pious British choral tradition that characterized the performances of the B-Minor Mass he heard as a boy. And that is something he has now expunged with a vengeance as he has attempted to return the Mass to something closer to what he suspects Bach originally had in mind.

Parrott’s B-Minor Mass makes a radically different impression than it does even in the hands of other historically minded performers. For one thing, this was the most modern-sounding performance of the piece I have ever heard. Whatever history tells us, our ears heard something not old but new Thursday night, a familiar piece taken out of the context of its own performance history (it was never performed in Bach’s lifetime) and now presented in an entirely fresh and new manner.

Parrott’s version, in fact, strikes the modern ear as essentially Postmodern--Bach deconstructed. Hearing a choral work sung one to the part, we first notice what is missing. The flesh has been removed and the structure revealed. Gone, too, are the comfort and safety of numbers, replaced by individuals dangerously exposed.

That danger seemed to be just what Parrott thrived on most. He goaded his performers with no more mercy than a Marine sergeant. Tempos verged on the impossibly fast. More than once, one sat on the seat’s edge nervously thrilled, worried about a rhythmic train wreck. It wasn’t just the soloists, but also the members of the orchestra who were brought to the brink of performability by incautious tempos. But that also made heroes out of the concertmaster, solo trumpet and horn and two beguiling oboe d’amore players.

The five solo singers--sopranos Barbara Borden and Ellen Hargis, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Lane, tenor Marc Molomot and bass Curtis Streetman--were riveting. Parrott pushed them to their limits, and in so doing, they became dramatic characters in their own right.

Placing such demands on the soloists, however, would have made it impossible for them to maintain this incendiary tension throughout the nearly two-hour piece, so Parrott had a small chorus of 10, five on either side of the stage, to periodically spell the soloists. The ancillary singers became a rudimentary chorus and proved a pleasure.

Ultimately, Parrott’s performance was as much about the conductor as it was about Bach and his time. Parrott, who has an emotional style of waving his hands about, becomes very excited by the inner dynamics of this music, and he has the knack to make that excitement visceral in performance. Still, I wonder how much that has to do with actually taking us back to Bach.

At this performance, my impression was not unlike the one I get these days when I walk by the construction site of the Disney Concert Hall, peering up at the complex steel skeleton and watching the metallic skin go on. I am thrilled by what I see and muse about what it will be like when it’s fleshed out.

Likewise, by capturing the structural drama of the B Minor, Parrott’s performance proved an excellent occasion to begin musing about fleshing out the Mass as a stage work, which is exactly what Los Angeles Opera will do in two months’ time. The controversy has just begun.