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Swansea Festival of Music and the Arts 2010 (2) - Monteverdi, Vespers of 1610: St Mary’s Church, Swansea, 10.10 2010 (NR)

 

Gill Ross, soprano

Philippa Hyde, soprano

Charles Daniels, tenor

Robin Burlton, tenor

Giles Underwood, bass

Greg Skidmore, bass

Cantemus Chamber Choir Wales

Hercules Ensemble

Robert Court, conductor

 

 

As I mentioned in my review of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales concert on October 9^th, in the current funding climate the Swansea Festival has been reduced to something of a shadow of its former self. So it is altogether heartening that it should still be able to go ahead with such a terrific venture as this performance of the complete Monteverdi Vespers of 1610, in Saint Mary’s Church in the city centre, a venue with an acoustic to rival any in Britain.

 

There is much dispute about the exact occasion or ecclesiastical purpose of the Vespers, but there’s no doubt that in scale, ambition and grandeur this work pushes further than any piece of religious music previously written. The opening bars of Deus in adiutorium meum sweep the audience away immediately, the choir exclaiming on a single note against the rising and overlapping fanfares of sackbuts, cornets, recorders and violins. Some of the other psalm settings, especially the Lauda Jerusalem, have a similar vitality and irresistible rhythmic drive, while the more meditative passages form a beautiful contrast. It was fascinating to experience, section by section, what is effectively the entire Baroque musical endeavour being set in motion. The Marian motet Pulchra es, for example, simple and sparse, just a pair of sopranos with continuo, established the form for ‘domestic’ devotional music that was still followed by composers such as Charpentier and Couperin nearly a century later; while the Sonata sopra Sancta Maria seems almost to prefigure the chorale preludes of Bach, with its complex harmonic and rhythmic variations over a single repeated tune. The two excellent sopranos Gillian Ross and Philippa Hyde stood together in the pulpit for the Pulchra es, one of a number of inventive but never obtrusive uses of the space of the church to augment the musical effect. The exceptional vocal demands of Monteverdi’s writing, from long sustains to crazily hiccupping melismas, were negotiated by all the solo singers with real élan, but if one stood out it was the tenor Charles Daniels, stepping into the breach at short notice owing to the indisposition of Nicholas Mulroy. Daniels’ performance of the aria Nigra sum, with nothing but a gentle theorbo accompaniment for support, was truly astonishing, filling the nave with resonance and creating an extraordinary depth of silence in the pauses. A word, too, for the theorbo player Manuel Minguillon, also called up at short notice, whose continuo work, together with the cellist Claudine Cassidy, violone player Jan Spencer and the organist Alastair Ross, was finely discreet and sensitive.

 

The Cantemus Chamber Choir itself could have done with a bit more weight at the bass end – a slightly surprising thing to note of a Welsh choir – but its sound, together with that of the period instrument group the Hercules Ensemble, was always workmanlike and often much more than that. Robert Court expertly kept the music moving and breathing. There were a few rough edges, as you would expect with any amateur choir, but this was one of those occasions where the sheer marvel of the music overrode any trivial quibbles about details of the performance.

 

Neil Reeve