Music: Mixed 'Messiah' By Erik Erikssen News-Chronicle Green Bay Symphony Orchestra Music Director Bridget-Michael Reischl once again gave audiences Handel's Handel last Saturday night. For the second year in a row, she addressed a lean, Baroque-sized orchestra, this time of 21 players, and offered a large portion of "Messiah," strong in both scholarship and high drama. On the stage of the Meyer Theatre, she emphasized a sinewy sound, crisp attacks and sharp cutoffs (with, nonetheless, a few "echoes" at times), authentic in sound and soul. The Green Bay Chamber Choir had worked hard under both its director Michael Rosewall and Reischl to produce a light, concentrated tone - and largely succeeded. Given the fast tempi, some passages betrayed the effort involved, but the chorus's spirit was right to the point. The soloists were the same as last year, two of them showing a real affinity for Handel style. Mezzo-soprano Janet Leigh managed the almost impossibly low-lying contralto solos capably and added a good deal of appropriate ornamentation. Tenor Rico Serbo's timbre is distinctly grainy, but his voice is steady, his sense of style assured and he sang with gripping intensity. Soprano Lynn Griebling displayed a lyric voice of attractive timbre, but one which often only approximated intricate passagework; her best work was heard in "I Know That My Redeemer Liveth." Bass Kenneth J. Church brought to his arias a large, resonant instrument with impressive low notes and a disturbing wobble. He had difficulty in negotiating all but the least complicated passages. A voice for Mozart and Verdi, perhaps even Wagner. Not for Handel, however. On our mid-November pilgrimage to Chicago, we heard, in addition to the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and Lyric Opera's "Siegfried," the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The Nov. 20 performance found the orchestra in excellent form, spurred on by the ministrations of a severe and demanding maestro, Kurt Masur. It was impossible to shake the feeling that the orchestra had felt challenged by the presence the night before of the incomparable Berlin band, led by Sir Simon Rattle. There was greater freedom of physical movement and the execution of each phrase and musical paragraph was vintage CSO. Likewise, the solo playing, especially from oboe principal Alex Klein and principal flutist Mathieu Dufour, was extraordinary. CSO music director Daniel Barenboim has not always attended to the place of sensuous sound. Nevertheless, his orchestra is capable of striking tonal refinement when others occupy the podium. It plays beautifully for Principal Guest Conductor Pierre Boulez and did some breathtaking things under the Austrian Manfred Honeck less than two years ago. Kurt Masur roots are Central European and conservative. During his years at the helm of the New York Philharmonic, he brought discipline to an unruly orchestra, though disappointed some with his cautious programming. Here, he trod a traditional course for his opening and concluding works while offering his clearest and most imaginative thoughts on a towering 20th century composer. The Overture to Glinka's opera "Ruslan and Ludila" has long served as a concert opener for virtuoso orchestras and, here, Masur made the most of the unlimited resources within the CSO. Driven along at breakneck speed, even more so in the accelerando at the end, it shot sparks into the most distant reaches of Orchestra Hall. An altogether different score, Dmitri Shostakovich's First Violin Concerto stole into one's consciousness stealthily. As collaborator, Masur had one of today's most resolutely involved and involving violinists, Siberian-born, Russian-trained Vadim Repin. Repin brought to this enormously unsettling work a comprehensive technique and the most probing of minds, quick to find the concerto's aching voice, telling of artistic isolation and the oppression of a totalitarian regime. Completed during the period in which Shostakovich suffered his second official attack for writing "formalistic" and "anti-democratic" music, the composer withheld the work until 1955, two years after the death of Stalin. Repin's pallid, reticent tone in the beginning of the Nocturne gave way to a sardonic Scherzo, full and fiery. His softly glowing sound in the Passacaglia presaged a manic Burlesque, overflowing with harsh and ironic mirth. The CSO played with fullest involvement. An electrifying Beethoven Seventh Symphony formed the second half, with the final two movements both sumptuous and muscular, sharply outlined and fast-paced. Thoroughly exhilarating music-making. Erik Eriksson writes about classical music and jazz for The News-Chronicle. A member of the Music Critics Association of North America and the Jazz Journalists Association, he may be reached by e-mail at [email protected].