‘It's not Christmastime without Handel’
The NJSO's performances of Handel's Messiah top The Star-Ledger's Top 5 NJ Shows This Week:
NJSO ‘Messiah’ — The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra performs Handel’s “Messiah” at the Richardson Auditorium on Friday, at Michael T. Lake PAC in Neptune, and at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center on Sunday. Music director Jacques Lacombe conducts, with guest artists soprano Nathalie Paulin, mezzo-soprano Mireille Lebel, tenor Isaiah Bell, bass Gordon Bintner and the Montclair State University Chorale led by Heather J. Buchanan. Tickets are $15-$89, njsymphony.org
As quickly as the holidays were upon us, the Christmas concert season is already winding down. But there is still one more weekend of festive music to enjoy. Four area concerts, among many, allow opportunities to rejoice.
The twin titans of Baroque music – Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel – will descend on Princeton, by way of choral masterworks associated with the season.
Members of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra will appear at Richardson Auditorium on Friday at 7:30 p.m., with soloists and the Montclair State University Singers, for perhaps the last word in local “Messiah” performances this season.
Soprano Natalie Paulin, mezzo-soprano Mireille Lebel, tenor Isaiah Bell, and bass Gordon Bintner will join a chamber orchestra of crackerjack players under the baton of NJSO music director Jacques Lacombe.
Handel’s most beloved oratorio is presented in collaboration with McCarter Theatre.
“The ‘Messiah’ holds a very special place in the repertoire,” Lacombe says, “and for many people on a personal level as well. The message of the piece is so powerful and universal. This music can really unify people.”
The NJSO will observe a centuries-old tradition of inviting the audience to stand during the “Hallelujah Chorus,” a custom attributed, perhaps apocryphally, to George II, who allegedly leaped to his feet during the work’s London premiere.
Previously, Asbury Park Press wrote of the Messiah's appeal: “It’s not simply the ‘Hallelujah’ chorus, as thrilling a moment as that is. It is not even a mere collection of such highlights, including, say, ‘I Know that My Redeemer Liveth,’ ‘His Yoke Is Easy’ and ‘But Who May Abide the Day of His Coming?’ On the contrary, ‘Messiah’ is a deathless work from beginning to end.”
RELATED: Asbury Park Press previews Handel's Messiah with the NJSO