2019/2020 Season Reviews

REVIEW: The Well-Caffeinated Clavier

Playing with lucid and liquid technique, interpretive verve, and rhythmic acuity, the soloist/conductor steered the way with authority and allure…Egarr can make the harpsichord sing sweetly and growl, fret, muse, and even thunder a little. PBO audiences are getting a keyboard master in their new music director.—Steven Winn, San Francisco Classical Voice

[Richard] brings a lively spontaneity to his execution… delivering one of the liveliest (caffeinated?) accounts of this well-known score that could be imagined.—Stephen Smoliar, The Rehearsal Studio

REVIEW: Handel’s Aci, Galatea e Polifemo

McGegan conducted the Philharmonia Baroque Chamber Players with flawless grace and exactitude…. Their sound was fluent and luxurious, distinct, precise, the brass bold and bright, the recorder delicate, the strings and harpsichord a filigree of exactness and sweetness. Together with the singers they created a tapestry of beauty that unfurled like waves. Full and plentiful, luxurious, powerful, the production shone with splendor. Yes, that is the only word for it: Splendid.—Lois Silverstein, Opera Wire

Answering each other’s sinuous and sumptously decorated vocal lines, Snouffer and Costanzo sang with unsparing vitality and expressiveness on opening night… Snouffer drew the single strongest card of the evening and played it splendidly in her lavishly trilling bird aria. The Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra’s shimmering accompaniment and the delicate, stuttering flight of a bird across the video screen supplied an elevating lift. Conducting from the harpsichord keyboard, Nicholas McGegan led a performance that matched the emotional fiber and immediacy of the singers.—Steven Winn, San Francisco Classical Voice

Over the last 35 years, Nicholas McGegan has made the Bay Area’s Philharmonia Baroque into America’s premier early music ensemble… he has outdone himself with a stupendously sung and profoundly disquieting “Aci.” Acis and Galatea express themselves through spectacular singing, at which Snouffer and Costanzo prove breathtaking.—Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times

…one of the striking aspects of this project…is how seamlessly its strands fuse with one another. The terror and the tenderness, the formal artifice and the expressive immediacy — they’re all bound up together in an inventive weave… Davóne Tines as Polifemo, his resonant bass-baritone extending easily to stratospheric highs and cavernous lows, is a terrifying embodiment of implacable will. Conductor Nicholas McGegan and the players of Philharmonia are practiced hands at this repertoire, and their contributions — particularly in the garish but impressive brass fanfare that greets Polifemo’s arrival — were never less than stellar.—Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle

…Davóne Tines was outstanding as Polifemo. His robust, ultra-masculine bass-baritone captured the power of this bestial Polyphemus, son of Poseidon… [his] wonderfully emotive falsetto voice conveyed layer upon layer of emotional depth. As Acis, soprano Lauren Snouffer was superb. Vocally, she was luminous.”—James Roy Macbean, Berkeley Daily Planet

REVIEW: The Music of Shakespeare

Conductor Nicholas McGegan led the brilliant ensemble, joined by soprano Sherezade Panthaki who sang like a celestial diva…Philharmonia Baroque is a glistening Bay Area ensemble…”—Barbara Rose Shuler, Monterey Herald

REVIEW: Judas Maccabaeus

…Bruce Lamott’s Philharmonia Chorale contributed singing of remarkable tonal heft and dramatic vigor… it’s to the credit of Philharmonia and McGegan—who is now midway through his valedictory season after 35 remarkable years as music director—that the piece came off as enticingly as it did.—Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle

…Prominent throughout, too, was the chorus, which conductor Nicholas McGegan adroitly led, along with the superb orchestra… The chorus’ famous Act 3 “See, the conqu’ring hero comes!” was magnificent.—James Ambroff-Tahan, San Francisco Examiner

[Philharmonia Baroque Chorale] were a resounding group, singing with highly attractive and varied gradation while communicating their sentiments with a convincing air…Nicholas McGegan steered a thoroughly expert and tightly tuned orchestra, and offered the music up in a respectful and sensitive homage to Handel…—Paul Selar, Opera Chaser

…McGegan has always prized flexibility and dramatic immediacy, as Saturday’s performance in Berkeley’s First Congregational Church showed. He gave the singers their time and they rewarded him and the audience with superbly characterized performances… The orchestra, needless to say, was brilliant throughout, led by a full, rich string section, always the bedrock of this orchestra. The Chorale was superbly balanced throughout but with satisfying weight to the sound.—Michael Zwiebach, San Francisco Classical Voice

REVIEW: Mozart’s Musings

…the orchestra rose to the occasion. The pace allowed the melody to float freely—especially through the strings’ rich playing—and avoided getting bogged down in individual bars; the contrasts between slow/piano sections and quick/forte ones were also very pronounced. These choices created a thrilling experience for the listener, and the orchestra succeeded where others may have fallen apart.—Catriona Barr, San Francisco Classical Voice

In the hands of oboist Gonzalo X. Ruiz and conductor Jeannette Sorrell, this Oboe Concerto was a show-stopper! The virtuosity of Ruiz was spectacular; and Jeannette Sorrell’s conducting was both graceful and animated.—James Roy Macbean, Berkeley Daily Planet

REVIEW: A Cosmic Notion

The performance was all you could wish for.—Michael Zwiebach, San Francisco Classical Voice

In the nine-movement “Ode,” McGegan’s lively conducting and joyful interactions with the vocalists and lush-sounding orchestra instilled the occasion with vibrancy, as did crisply toned countertenor Reginald Mobley, whose pairing with a trumpet suggested the dawn of a new day. Also notable were Bruce Lamott’s plushly sonorous chorale, clear-voiced soprano Arwen Myers, resilient bass-baritone Dashon Burton and velvety contralto Avery Amereau.—James Ambroff-Tahan, San Francisco Examiner

Shaw has taken the occasion of writing for period instruments to heart—this is her fourth commissioned work for Philharmonia—in a way that exploits the sounds of the orchestra without overstating things. The Philharmonia Chorale, directed by Bruce Lamott, dived headlong into the score’s rich harmonies, and the orchestra gave the music the necessary sparkle.—Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle

2019/20 SEASON PREVIEW

Commissions, Grammy Award-winning performers, the West Coast Premiere of the praised NY production of Handel’s “Aci, Galatea e Polifemo” with star countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, and a fully staged production of Leclair’s “Scylla et Glaucus,” which PBO will take on tour to Versailles, highlight McGegan’s versatility and expertise over more than 35 years on the podium.—Philip Campbell, Bay Area Reporter

CD REVIEW: Handel Joseph and His Brethren

Enhancing the performance immeasurably are the superbly proportioned, technically immaculate contributions of the Philharmonia Baroque and Philharmonia Chorale.—Roger Pines, Opera News

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