Three Divas at Time and Space Limited with The Four Nations Ensemble Concert #1, Elisabeth Linley

TSL, Hudson, NY

March 1, 2025

Pascale Beaudin, soprano

Charles Brink, traverso

Olivier Brault, violin

Loretta O'Sullivan, cello

Andrew Appel, harpsichord

Aniela Eddy, violin

Kristen Linfante, viola

Scott Pauley, archlute

Three Divas at Time and Space Limited with The Four Nations Ensemble

J. C. Bach (arr. Mozart) Concerto in G major

G. F. Handel, A Scene from Semele

J. C. Bach, Flute Quartet in C major

Thomas Linley, Tune Philomel to a happy strain 

G. F. Handel, “Oh Sleep why dost thou leave me” from Semele

J. Haydn (arr. Solomon), Symphony #98 in B-flat major, Hob l:98

Soprano Elisabeth Linley and brother Thomas "Tom" Linley. Painting by Thomas Gainsborough.

Time & Space Limited (“TSL”) is a unique resource that has been creating, purveying, curating, and adorning theatre, music, visual art, and performance art for over fifty years. Linda Mussmann and Claudia Bruce have sparked much of the emergence of Hudson over decades into the bristling and vibrant place it has become.  Always wary  that the needs of the town cannot be met with mere boutiques, galleries and cafes, Linda and Claudia have been in the forefront of educating, enlivening, and expanding the artistic quality of life in  Columbia County and beyond.  They have underwritten programs to assist homeless, non-English speaking newcomers, and aspiring artists deserving recognition, as well as other important community initiatives.

Seekers of classical music have had TSL’s Metropolitan HD broadcasts to watch since the HD inception years ago.  Occasionally  concerts are held in the main gallery, which boasts a reverberant, musically favorable acoustic. 

Since I always associate TSL with progressivism in local and national matters, it was  a bit synchronistic to attend a performance of Eighteenth-century Gallant and Classical music just one day after the frightening lack of decorum and civility of the Oval Office “smack down” of the Ukrainian president. However, an  immersion in another time and space in my mind was sorely needed.  

England, which had suffered civil upheaval in the mid-seventeenth century and was about to feel the blade and bullet at the end of the eighteenth, was enjoying the Hanover dynasty’s taste in the arts in theinterim . George Frideric Handel, a German native, had become London’s most important musician . He created dozens of operas and oratorios, and, after his death, Johann Christian Bach, the youngest of J.S. Bach’s musical children, would be chosen to continue infusing London with the latestcontinental musical styles. Both opera and concert music emphasized clarity, grace, easy-on-the-ears harmonies, and, most importantly, musical forms that could be followed by the burgeoning musically literate masses.

On Saturday , March 1, TSL hosted the Four Nations Ensemble, a group of musicians that have performed Baroque, Classical, and early Romantic chamber music for three decades.   

The Four Nations Ensemble (from top, clockwise): Andrew Appel, harpsichord, Loretta O'Sullivan, cello, Charles Brink, traverso, Pascale Beaudin, soprano, Olivier Brault, violin

Mr. Appel, the founder and director, gave an introduction to the political landscape of the times, with some fascinating historical details.  The acoustics of TSL, according to Mr. Appel, were ideal for the chamber music he offered and were especially complementary to the period touches employed, such as the transverse flute and baroque bows in Handel’s work.

Alarms and noises from the corpus politicum  have a hidden benefit of bringing out groups like Four Nations to more accessible venues so that more people  can hear this wonderful music in an ideal acoustic. Mr. Appel, Loretta O'Sullivan, and Scott Pauley provided the basso continuo, played by harpsichord, cello and archlute, that supported the strings, flute and vocal parts.

The thread of the three recitals at TSL is termed “Three Divas” referring to three eighteenth century vocalists that were prominent in different kingdoms of Europe.  Elizabeth Linley, the subject of today’s concert, was a soprano renowned for her stunning appearance as well as her artistry.  She and her younger sibling (Thomas “Tom” Linley) were two of eight musically gifted children of famed music teacher and vocalist, Thomas Linley the Elder.  Elizabeth married the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and became prominent in enlightening blue-blooded women  with contemporary culture. Her younger brother, Tom, was a child prodigy and an exact contemporary and cherished childhood friend of Mozart. Held in esteem by Mozart’s father, Leopold, Tom was considered a brilliant composer and violinist whose star was tragically extinguished in a boating accident at the of twenty-two.

Tom Linley’s light-hearted Tune Philomel to a happy strain brushes past the dark Greek myth of Philomela: a woman is transformed to a nightingale after being raped and abused by her sister’s husband . The song, which gives a soprano ample opportunity for graceful birdlike ornaments, encourages transcending a mournful and painful state, and to be sweetly charmed by the nightingale’s song[. Ms. Beaudin, a wonderful Canadian (New Brunswicker) soprano, really stole the show in the subtlety of her ornamentation, controlled coloratura, and warm vocal color.

The program for this concert was carefully and thoughtfully crafted to demonstrate the evolution of musical style at that time in England. The course of the English Baroque, from J.C. Bach’s evolutionary galant to  the mature Classical structures of Haydn (and, of course, Mozart) was clearly plotted throughout.

Handel, the Baroque master and champion of the fading contrapuntal style, was a German native who settled in England in 1712. He was a favorite of the Hanover monarch George I and later, George II.  After Handel’s death in 1759, Johann Christian Bach settled in London in 1762, and become the predominant musical influence as Handel’s successor.  In 1764, W. A. Mozart, a child, was brought to London by his father-promoter, Leopold.  The two had spent (and would spend) years touring Europe making Wolfgang the best-known musical sensation.  The “London” Bach and little Mozart got along famously, and it is not an exaggeration to say that J.C. Bach became the dominating musical influence on the young Mozart. Later, Mozart learned of J.S. Bach and Handel through Baron Gottfried van Swieten, a government official and patron of several composers of the Classical era.  Joseph Haydn was also a strong influence on Mozart .

The Four Nations opened with one of J.C. Bach’s three harpsichord concerti that Mozart arranged as part of the latter’s K. 107 set .  Perhaps composed in 1765, at six years of age, these arrangements begin to reveal the young genius’s talent. Later in the concert, a flute quartet  by J.C. Bach was performed with a rondeau finale which affected surprising minor key excursions. Mr. Brink’s flute playing here was limpid and expressive. 

Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 98 in B-flat major, Hob I:98 is one of the great “London” symphonies and was first  performed in 1792. In this reduction for strings and flute, the arrangement was still aglow with Haydn’s mastery. He revived counterpoint in his development sections, and integrated unexpected surprises and chromaticism.  The Adagio movement is a tombeau  of sorts for Mozart, whose death likely coincided with Haydn’s beginning of this work’s composition.  Haydn clearly quotes the “Agnus Dei” from Mozart’s Coronation Mass, K. 317 . The finale of the symphony incorporates a theme from the opening movement and lifts any veil of mourning with a witty stop-and-go coda.

Handel, the apogee of the English Baroque, left thirty-six operas written for the London stage. After 1741 Handel wrote oratorios performed in concert rather than on stage. Semele, such a staged work, was performed during Lent, but was based on Greek myths and thumbed its nose at the religious occasion. This subject was deemed inappropriate, even morally wayward; it quickly vanished from sight, considered a blemish on the elder composer. However, the work is compelling both musically and dramatically. Several excerpts from Semele were performed today and Ms. Beaudin shaped each to the affekt  of the text.  The coloratura passages of the aria “The morning lark” were especially attractive imparting the words “warbling throat.” 

Thomas Gainsborough captured the period featured today  through his pleasantly smiling subjects, happily swathed in fancy with washes of rich blue.  Poet Wallace Stevens noted that great art in response to adversity is not “escapist,” but rather acts as a “Noble Rider” to sustain us.  Revisiting the pastoral, harmonious charm of the Georgian era, reminds us that some monarchies can, at times, be enlightened and advance civilization.

** NOTE: Three Divas Concert #2,   Esther Charlotte Brandes, “Melodrama!” at TSL March 29, 2025