Your eyes don’t deceive you. Yes, that’s Nathalie Stutzmann, the distinguished French contralto, conducting Handel’s Messiah with the Philadelphia Orchestra at 2 p.m. next Sunday at the Kimmel Center. Like soprano Barbara Hannigan, Stutzmann is serious about conducting – to judge from the radio broadcast of her St. Louis Symphony Orchestra guest-conducting date this year. Her rendition of Dvorak’s Symphony No. 7 exuded insight, intelligence, strategy, and the kind of heat one associates with Gustavo Dudamel. How those virtues translate into Handel’s Messiah remains to be seen. But it’s a fair bet the performance won’t be routine.
David Patrick Stearns
in Features