"Decorating the Christmas Tree" and Handel

Marcel Reider, Decorating the Christmas Tree, 1898 (Private collection)

I saw this painting on Twitter today and thought it was a lovely combination of a 19th-century domestic scene with a subtle nod to Baroque lighting. The warmth of the light and the colors reminded me a little bit of Paul Peel's After the Bath.

I like looking at this painting and thinking about how decorating the tree can be a quiet event. This has been a busy month and far from quiet! But the noise that has happened has been happy, even lovely and inspiring, noise. Yesterday I finished the fourth (and final) performance of Handel's "Messiah" with the symphony chorale, and it truly was a delight to perform. Our guest conductor, Matthew Halls, was fantastic. I thought he had such a charged and energetic interpretation of the Messiah, and really worked hard with the chorus and orchestra to bring the text to life through music. Our performances had the right focus on Baroque drama and conveying the narrative of the oratorio. Today I tried to listen to the Overture on a Spotify recording (not our symphony) and I realized that it sounded much to staid and serious in contrast to the energy of our recent performances. (And while we received a favorable review in the Seattle Times, there was a mixed review of Halls's interpretation of the Messiah by a Canadian music critic in 2017.)

I don't have a recording of our performance, but here is one that Matthew Halls conducted with another symphony: