Geoffrey Thomas

Thomas is a great performer. A gesture, a slight undertone, a conscious body attitude or a properly proportioned exaggeration is sufficient: all becomes either completely quiet in the hall, or inspired laughter breaks forth

Badische Neueste Nachrichten
Karlsruhe, Germany
24.02.06

Great Performance

Handel Program for Children in the State Theater

You don’t need many effects or subtleties to delight an audience of children. Sometimes a single performer, who knows what he is up to, is enough. The harpsichordist Geoffrey Thomas, founder of the Budapest Baroque Chamber Orchestra, slipped into the roles of Handel’s contemporaries and brought the Baroque master to life. Handel Top Secret is the name of the program, which served to make a highly enjoyable hour in the Baden State Theater.

First Handel strides out onto the state singing Hallelujah. There a curved armchair, a candelabra and a fortepiano create a certain Rococo flair. Behind a partition wall hang wigs, shimmering robes and frock coats, which Thomas changes into according to the scene. We see, for example, the strict father who (like most fathers) wants his son to become something “respectable;”at which point he energetically pounds on the floor with his walking stick and recalls with shaking head that “no keyboard was safe from his snaky little fingers.“ These little fingers were so familiar with the organ that they so thoroughly impressed the Duke of Sachsen-Weißenfels (Handel was ten at the time) that this music-loving regent praised the boy’s talent profusely and spoke with great seriousness to his father.

After little George Frederick received his training, contemporaries were filled with „burrrrrrning curiosity“ about the young artist. Geoffrey Thomas rolls his tongue with such passion, that the children become curious about Handel’s music. Under the hands of Geoffrey Thomas the music sounds at times soft and sensuous, at other times sprightly, passionate and virtuosic and the fortepiano reveals Handel’s broad color palette. When Thomas mimes the baroque master, who at a riper age recounts how music had taken him “it with all its force,” one can feel this strength penetrating the actor’s entire body.

Thomas is a great performer. A gesture, a slight undertone, a conscious body attitude or a properly proportioned exaggeration is sufficient: all becomes either completely quiet in the hall, or inspired laughter breaks forth, and this, despite the fact that the content is not always easy for children to understood.

The aging Miss Buxtehude appears with her lace bonnet. Her father had attached the acquisition of the Lübeck organist’s post to marriage to his daughter, which had driven many away. In addition we meet Johann Mattheson, who boasted of challenging Handel to a duel, because Handel refused to vacate the harpsichord during an opera performance in the Hamburg opera house. And finally the Italian prima donna Francesca Cuzzoni sweeps across the stage in a red gown passionately praising the high fees of the London Royal Academy and just as passionately detesting English food. This is a demanding program, which children watch with great attention.

Christine Gehringer