A temple for all seasons Peter Johannes Erichsen, Weekendavisen’s music critic When George Friderich Handel died in 1759, the future master builder, C.F. Hansen, and the future composer, W.A. Mozart, were merely three years old. Although they were contemporaries, the one came to influence the French Empire style and the other to perfect late Baroque. C.F Hansen’s buildings in Copenhagen – the Cathedral, the Law Courts, the Metropolitan School, and Christiansborg Chapel – with their grey shades and monumentality would seem to be more suited to reflect Beethoven’s music rather than Mozart’s. Mozart’s widow, Constanze, lived in Copenhagen for a short time after the English bombardment in 1807; from her house in Lavendelstræde to the ringing sounds of the chisel, she could see the rebuilding of the monumental buildings for which C.F. Hansen was master. But the Cathedral was only finished after her departure in 1820. The interior of C.F. Hansen’s spacious basilica could, in effect, act as the stage setting for Mozart’s last opera, ‘La clemenza di Tito’, where, in l791, he is one step away from the coming rigorous Empire style. In spite of the name, Frue Kirke (Church of Our Lady), the Madonna is no longer present in the room, and it is just as likely to be Jupiter as Jesus standing there behind the altar, full of energy, with arms opened wide. Almost any other church would have an entreating crucifix in place, instead. If you look around at Thorvaldsen’s apostles lined up down the nave, Peter and Paul seem to be puzzled at the atmosphere of sanctity. Paul still has faith in his sword, but Peter looks as though he is about to mislay the keys. Half way down is James wearing his travelling hat already looking around for other horizons. We know that Santiago de Compostela will be the destination. But which tones should we be hearing, here on Frue Plads, where the apostles are still gathered together? In this country, it has become a tradition in the days leading up to Christmas to perform Handel’s oratorio, ‘Messiah’, in this magnificent fantasy of an early Roman frigidarium. When the place is filled up, people look down from the grooved balustrades like supporting characters in a painting by the Baroque painter, Veronese. There, where the chorus is seated, Thorvaldsen’s life-sized baptismal angel sits enthroned in between the singers, staring trance-like, but resolute. When you think the winged statue is beginning to join in the singing, the magic is at its highest. Twelve hundred people made blessed in an instant. The conductor of the Akademisk Kor og Orkester, Nenia Zenana, steers the performance like a super shepherdess. Soothing and jubilant in her touch, she coaxes out a shady pastoral sound wherever it can be done. But when joy is to explode, the phrase “wonderful” is sung out with all the power of a musical about settlers. In front, facing the audience, stand the four soloists, Marianne G. Nielsen, Ulla Kudsk Jensen, Kristian Sørensen, and John Lundgren: soprano, contralto, tenor, and bass. Handel’s ingenious musical idiom colours them slowly into figures who seem familiar to us since The Royal Theatre’s epoch-making production of Handel’s opera ‘Julius Caesar’. The soprano is as skittish as Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, the contralto as melancholy as Cornelia, widow of the general, and the tenor and bass share Caesar’s adroitness and vigour. A heathen work, stuffed with eroticism and dawning intrigues. In the Saviour-celebrating oratorio, ‘Messiah’ purifies the characters. The four singers are now both curative and larger than life. At the same time, this masterpiece describes its own ostentatious architecture. The first part with the Annunciation is the processional way along the nave, the second part, the Passion, touches on the altar. The Hallelujah Chorus arches the Baroque dome of the sounds over C.F. Hansen’s curve of the apse. Building technology adds on quite extraordinarily in the third part a sparkling campanile with the bass aria, “The trumpet shall sound” above the signal for the Last Judgement. This temple, which contains so much of the spirit of antiquity and contemporary stringency, gives scope for the playful caprices of the Baroque with this kind of ‘Messiah’ performance. This spellbinding moment will pass the purists by, but then they will hardly want to know.