Peter EOTVOS Madrigal Comedies
Tomkins Vocal Ensemble of Budapest.
Canario Historic Dance Group & Excanto Music Ensemble. St Paul's
Covent Garden 17 March 2002 (PGW)
A full house at St Paul's Covent Garden made an auspicious start to
a wide ranging festival encompassing an art exhibition at the Hungarian
Cultural Centre, dance and music, jazz as well as classical. The miniaturist
Kurtag's retrospective will probably attract greatest attention, but
the attendance to hear his recent Madrigal Comedies of Peter
Eotvos (honoured earlier in the day by the President of Hungary,
Dr Ferenc Madl) was a reminder that this is a prolific composer of comparable
stature. Brilliantly put over by the Tomkins Vocal Ensemble of Budapest,
director Janos Dobra, only the of heads of the12 singers appeared with
funny hats behind music stands which were disguised as picture screens
which were moved around the stage - a good solution to eliminate the
distraction of watching singers turn over the pages of their music.
No comprehensible words were heard in Madrigal Comedies, nor
intended to be, so it seemed. This music had a winning freshness and
inhabited the nonsense world of Ligeti's Aventures, with all
possible extended vocal techniques. The Vocal Ensemble can be heard
at St Paul's on 20 March in a more normal mixed programme, including
their eponymous English composer, Thomas Tomkins.
Before that UK premiere, there was an enjoyable hour
of Renaissance courtly dances and songs (Monika Gonzalez), choreographed
to music from the Kajon and Victorsz Codex, the Canario Historic
Dance Group (equivalent to our Contretemps/Chalemie
School of Baroque Dance) supported by Excanto Music Ensemble,
an accomplished broken consort led by Gabor Kallay, an expert performer
on recorders and crumhorn. An important discovery was the excellent
clarity of the acoustics at St Paul's, a handsome church best known
from the film of My Fair Lady, made (as we were reminded) by
a Hungarian director. Bright clear and well-focussed sound, and no traffic
noise; c.p. other London churches more regularly used. Worth investigating
by concert promoters.
Full details of this enterprising festival at http://www.hungary.org.uk/English/Hungarian%20Spring/spring.htm
Peter Grahame Woolf
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