Photo by Stefan Cohen
I often hear that we live in anxious times. I’ve certainly said that more often than I wish I had to. Since the pandemic, it can feel like we’re buffeted with one crisis after another. In America, the performing arts often respond by retrenching, programming happy things, known things, inspirational things. And that certainly fulfills a need. Yet I can think of so many operas, plays, and musicals that have been created during anxious times that confront the anxiety directly. And that fulfills another need that often is neglected.
The San Francisco-based Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra has chosen the latter. Its fourth subscription concert of the 2025-26 season (titled “Pearls of Sorrow”) offered a master class in musical curation. The concert featured countertenor and co-curator Reginald Mobley in a program of German Baroque cantatas alongside African American spirituals arranged by Henry Lebedinsky.
The conductor and co-curator was Christine Brandes. I can recall first seeing and hearing Brandes as Iris, Juno’s rainbow-clad messenger, in San Francisco Opera’s production of Handel’s Semele way back in 2000. I still remember her bright and focused lyric soprano voice, which took her all over the world. She has since turned to teaching and conducting, holding professorships and lectureships at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University, and conducting both opera and concert repertoire across the United States, focusing on the Baroque and Classical periods. It was a full-circle moment for Brandes to return to Philharmonia Baroque, where she was once a regular presence, to lead the orchestra that once backed her on the stage.
I applaud the orchestra’s management for programming a concert with the box-office-threatening title “Pearls of Sorrow” at a time when escapism would be understandable given our anxious age. I noticed a few more empty seats at Bing Concert Hall in (and at) Stanford, and I wondered if the unadventurous or incurious were scared away by the threat of sorrow.
It’s too bad. Because the concert was one of the more life-affirming events I can imagine. From Mobley first taking the stage for Johann Christoph Bach’s “Ach, dass ich Wassers gnug hätte” to when he had sung the final notes of “My Lord What a Morning” at the end, the concert was anything but dour.
The program was in five parts: Trauma, Sorrow, Pain, All My Trials, Finding Peace/Freedom/Resilience. It’s really easy for a program like this to become maudlin. Brandes and Mobley traced an arc that made absolute sense. The trauma was not cheap, the resilience was not saccharine. Two astute musicians made sure none of it turned trite.
This music of grief and, eventually, resoluteness asked us in the audience to confront sorrow not as some performative trauma-bonding but as a part of life we too often pretend doesn’t exist. Music that was created by enslaved Africans in the American South and by German composers at the height of sectarian violence in Europe gave voice and witness to reality. The concert both nurtured and inspired.
The German composers featured favorites like J.S. Bach, Dietrich Buxtehude, and Heinrich Schütz, to which Brandes added composers whom I was meeting for the first time: David Pohle, Philipp Heinrich Erlebach, and Johann Christoph Bach (the older brother). I appreciated Mobley’s and Brandes’ decision to focus squarely on the Baroque era, even resisting the urge to veer toward the brighter, more theatrical early Classical era. There was an almost meditative quality to the German selections. The selection of spirituals mixed the familiar and not-so-familiar, allowing me to expand my understanding of the genre.
Giving voice to all of it was Mobley as both soloist and co-curator. He is an honest and dignified presence: no singer’s mannerisms, no affectations, no fussiness. He trusted the text. He trusted the music.
That’s not to say he wasn’t interpreting the music. Honoring the composer isn’t an act of subordination. Mobley’s approach inflected the text with enough pathos to give voice to the emotional condition, but not so much to create one where it didn’t exist. He bit into his German constants when the music asked for defiance. Other times, the consonants slid out, the voice more introspective.
The mechanics of his voice are fascinating. In the upper register, it’s airy (without being overly aspirated). It’s even ethereal. As I heard it in the acoustics of Bing Concert Hall, it’s not a muscular or authoritative voice. It doesn’t muscle its way into the hall. It glides. This allowed the German to be understood, since he wasn’t darkening the sound. I’ve rarely heard a singer be so generous to the text.
This lightness made the more mournful offerings, such as Schutz’s “Erbarm dich mein, o Herre Gott” (“Have mercy upon me, O Lord God”), particularly affecting. Mobley also found the authenticity in passages that called for a more extroverted approach, such as Bach’s “Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen” (“Cross and crown are bound together”) and Buxtehude’s “Wenn Ich, Herr Jesu, habe dich” (“If I have you, Lord Jesus”). Even under pressure, the voice never soured or turned ugly.
When I coach actors in voice and text, I sometimes ask them to “sit on” their voice, put it under a bit of pressure to see what comes out when they’re not being so guarded. When Mobley sat on his voice, it was clear that its theatricality was in the modal (chest) voice. If the music he sang by the German composers lived in the upper confines of the head, then the spirituals lived in the chest. For a voice that isn’t gigantic, where he placed it in the spirituals gave it a bluntness that wasn’t brutish. It caught me off guard. It was something I won’t soon forget.
The spirituals—particularly “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”, “There is a Balm in Gilead”, “Sinner Please Don’t Let This Harvest Pass”—benefited from his deft ability to negotiate the passaggio, that tricky break between the modal voice and the alto voice. I could almost call it belting, but without the showing off associated with that vocal choice. I would swear that Shirley Verrett had taken him over from the beyond. In a concert about remembrance, he allowed me to remember how I came to spirituals via singers like Grace Bumbry, Shirley Verrett, Jessye Norman. It was something I so appreciated. I would pay serious money to hear more of Mobley sing in that lower part of his voice.
Brandes was a deferential presence on the podium, guiding the orchestra with quiet confidence. Not even the most dolorous of selections was ever heavy or syrupy. Her tempos never let the music sag, never allowed mawkishness to creep in. She paced the afternoon in that sweet spot between Wagnerian importance and having a train to catch. She let the music breathe without over-inflating it.
To have a Baroque vocal concert backed by the Philharmonia Baroque is like having Martha Argerich play you “Happy Birthday” at a hotel piano bar. It’s pure luxury. As he was in the last PBO program, oboist Gonzalo X. Ruiz was a standout, every part Mobley’s equal in spinning out phrases that honored the emotionalism without cheapening it. It was the analogue to Mobley’s higher alto voice. On the other side of the stage was Nate Helgeson on the bassoon, doubling Mobley’s modal voice with both power and flexibility. Another delight was Adam Cockerham on the theorbo (a long-necked instrument of the lute family), which, when paired with Mobley, gave the music a sort of troubadour sound, gently accenting the sung text. As always, concertmaster Elizabeth Blumenstock came in with her usual mix of gusto and precision, the heartstrings of the accompaniment.
For those who embraced a program that leaned into grief and resilience, they were rewarded with a concert that was both smart and moving. And it was performed by artists daring enough to approach what could have been a pass-the-Kleenex affair with class. Here’s to hoping that other performing arts organizations follow Philharmonia Baroque’s lead in these anxious times. There are pearls to be found amidst the sorrow.
