Heroic homage to a martyr

The stage all but groaned with performers, maybe 250. Five choruses filled the rear area. A symphony orchestra occupied the middle. Ten vocal soloists and actors lined the front. A conscientious conductor commanded the podium.

This was, or at least was supposed to be, a magnetic, larger-than-life event: a presentation of Arthur Honegger’s historic, possibly overblown yet technically compact exercise in perfumed religiosity, Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher (Joan of Arc at the Stake). 

Written in 1935 and extended in 1944, it once sounded progressive, we are told, as it embellished the fate of the martyred maid of Orleans with precious poetry by Paul Claudel. The busy-music toyed periodically with plainchant, Bach chorales, cabaret caricature and not-so-hot jazz, all within a neoromantic frame that still managed to embrace impressionist shimmer. The ensemble utilised much percussive punctuation, favoured saxophones over French horns, and even featured a quaint period device, the ondes martenot, to provide woozy electronic waves. Honegger was, if nothing else, a master of stylistic fusion. He also was curiously deft at making a relatively short exercise, about 80 minutes, seem long.

Even though this challenge has had some notable champions over the decades – Paul Sacher, Charles Munch, Eugene Ormandy and Seiji Ozawa among them – performances have become increasingly rare. One might blame the cost of assembling such massive forces. One also might contemplate the possibility that Honegger’s time has come and gone. Marin Alsop, who presided over the aural orgy at Carnegie Hall, obviously feels Honegger’s time has come back.

She led Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher in festive Oregon this summer and with the LSO at the Barbican earlier this month. Last week she pioneered the so-called dramatic oratorio with the excellent Baltimore Symphony on home turf. And on Saturday she brought the package to Carnegie Hall.

She conducted throughout with neat bravado. In the process, she sustained an odd semblance of tension against the odds.

Although advance publicity heralded a semi-staged production, the stage director James Robinson could do little but coach spoken inflections and oversee lighting effects. There was no space for movement.

Caroline Dhavernas spoke Jeanne’s lines with stoic passion. Ronald Guttman offered sympathetic counterpoint as Frère Dominique. Timothy Fallon sounded strong in the ascending smirks of the tenor Porcus. Morris Robinson boomed darkly in assorted bass solos. Tamara Wilson’s bright soprano sounded a bit shrill in the saccharine blessings of the Virgin.

Honegger’s visage may adorn the 20-frank bill in Switzerland, but Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher lends little currency to the composer’s image as an important innovator. When all was said and sung, the would-be revival suggested much ado about rather little.

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