MESSIAH

posted by James Reel

    We’ve been running a lot of underwriting credits for performances this weekend of Handel’s Messiah. Here’s some background on the concerts:

    Almost every year, Enrique Lasansky conducts performances of Handel's Messiah. Perhaps he's making up for lost time.
    "I had no exposure to it whatsoever as I grew up as a musician," he says. Lasansky started out as a clarinetist, and there's no clarinet part in this most beloved of oratorios. If you're not a singer, a string player or maybe a trumpeter or oboist, you're not likely to perform it.
    "I never sang it," Lasansky says. "I don't think I even heard Messiah beyond the Hallelujah Chorus until I was in my 20s.
    "After that, I realized it was one of those pieces that are performed all the time, and as a conductor, I figured I needed to know it. It was a wonderful discovery for me, but it wasn't in my roots."
    As if to compensate for all those years of neglect, Lasansky has conducted Messiah most Christmases since he founded the Catalina Chamber Orchestra in 1991. (This season, the orchestra changed its name to Tucson Chamber Orchestra, to avoid confusion with the little town of Catalina, and it has completely professionalized. "There are a lot of new players," Lasansky says. "The old orchestra has gone away, in a way.")
    This year, he has gone all out. Not only is he conducting the work with his chamber orchestra this weekend; he hand-picked and personally rehearsed the chorus (instead of employing an existing community choir, as in the past), and this month, he's been immersing students at St. Gregory College Preparatory School in Messiah lore. He gave guest lectures in music, English and European history classes, and presided over an all-school assembly, performing bits of the work with his chorus and a string quartet.