Handel Choir

A SYKESVILLE couple has given the Handel Choir of Baltimore a $50,000 gift, its largest ever, raising the veteran city choir's mostly cash endowment to $140,000.Mr. and Mrs. G. Van Velsor Wolf, whose son, Timothy Wolf, is president of the board of trustees, made the gift to show their support of the choir and encourage others to contribute. The choir, singing since the 1930s, is the city's oldest continuously performing oratorio society."Through the years, we have been very impressed with the Handel Choir's performances," Van Velsor Wolf said.

The Handel Choir of Baltimore, the city's oldest oratorio society, has openings for singers in all voice parts. Singers must be able to sight-read music and have previous choral experience. The season includes performances of Mozart's Requiem, a concert of festive music for chorus and brass, the Mass in B minor by Bach and the choir's annual performances of Handel's "Messiah." Rehearsals are held 7:45 p.m. to 10 p.m. Mondays from September through May. For details and to arrange an audition, call (410)

Baltimore is a city rich in choral music. Every church, it seems, has a choir. There are community choirs and college choirs. And there are four professional choirs: Concert Artists of Baltimore, Choral Arts Society, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Chorus and the Handel Choir of Baltimore.Of these, the Handel Choir is the most venerable and its repertory the most specific. Though it performs many kinds of music, from Renaissance motets to contemporary works, it is best known for the big oratorios associated with its namesake.

The faces were pink with the season's cold. The eyes - all 50, in fact - were as wide as saucers, following every sweep of the conductor's hand. "Let the music that you play/ Make you joyful all the day," trilled voices that sounded angelic as they soared to the rafters of the old church. At yesterday's rehearsal of the Handel Children's Choir, a vocal group for kids ages 4 to 17, spirits seemed high, given the news the organization had just gotten. The Handel Choir of Baltimore announced last week that it would disband the children's group after eight largely successful years.

The Handel Choir of Baltimore's 63rd season will include four performances by the 75-voice full chorus, one concert by the 40-voice chamber choir, and two programs by the 14-voice a cappella chamber choir.The a cappella choir opens the season with "In the Beginning" at 3 p.m. Oct. 19 and closes the season with "Amour, and More" at 3 p.m. next June 7 at First English Lutheran Church.The full chorus presents Handel's "Samson" at 3 p.m. Nov. 2 at Beth Tfiloh; Handel's "Messiah" at 5 p.m. Dec. 7 at Grace Fellowship, 5 p.m. Dec. 14 at Church of the Redeemer, 7: 30 p.m. Dec. 20 at St. Margaret's in Bel Air, and 3 p.m. Dec. 21 at Goucher College.

To commemorate in music the human toll of war, any war, is a daunting prospect, involving weighty questions of text and tone, scope and scale. Benjamin Britten's attempt is the best known. He took the massive approach in 1961 with his War Requiem for soloists, multiple choruses and orchestra. It's steeped in references to the 20th century's two world conflicts, but timeless and place-less in its relevance, unmistakable in its anti-war mood. Jonathan Leshnoff followed a much more compact path in creating his Requiem for the Fallen, premiered Wednesday night by the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra and Handel Choir of Baltimore in a welcome collaboration at Goucher College's Kraushaar College (just one performance, unfortunately)

"Shout, shout, rejoice greatly" - Edward Polochick's extraordinarily imaginative, sometimes even audacious, interpretation of Handel's Messiah is back onstage at Meyerhoff Hall, performed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and a terrific quartet of soloists. If you weren't at last night's performance, you've got one more chance tonight to catch the annual treat. Given note-complete, this Messiah avoids even the slightest trace of long-windedness. Polochick treats the score like a great big canvas waiting to have fresh colors splashed on it. The music alternately soothes and explodes, creating remarkable contrasts of dynamics, articulation, tempo.

For the Handel Choir of Baltimore, bringing one of their namesake's greatest works to town has been a Herculean task.Among other things, they've had to cope with finding music long out of print, contend with voice and orchestra parts that don't match and resolve a Hydra-headed string of minor snafus.Yet despite their travails the choir is anticipating a historic performance today when it presents Handel's long-neglected oratorio "Hercules" at 3 p.m. at Baltimore's Church of the Redeemer." 'Hercules' is considered by many scholars to be among Handel's greatest works," says T. Herbert Dimmock III, the choir's artistic director.

Robert E. Snyder, 68, hospital pharmacy directorRobert E. Snyder, retired director of pharmacy services at Maryland General Hospital and a longtime member of the Handel Choir of Baltimore, died Oct. 7 of a brain tumor at home in the St. Paul at Chase Condominiums. He was 68.He joined the Maryland General staff in 1958 and was promoted to director of pharmacy services in 1965. He retired in 1997.For more than 30 years, Mr. Snyder, a bass, sang with the Handel Choir. He was a past president of the group.

This Sunday, Baltimore's Handel Choir opens its 63rd season with a concert in the "Music for a Great Space" series that does feature genuinely great music in an equally great space.The space is the historic Cathedral of the Assumption at Mulberry and Cathedral streets. Accompanied by the organ of the Basilica and a 16-piece brass and percussion ensemble, Handel Choir music director T. Herbert Dimmock and his 80 singers will divide themselves into groups positioned in the cathedral's balconies in order to create the glorious antiphonal effects necessary for the music of Gabrielli.