Reviews
THE GUARDIAN
Residency at Spitalfields Music (24 Dec 2008)
Four Stars
"To me," writes John Eliot Gardiner, "Christmas without Bach's music is unthinkable." Not a problem this year; his residency at the Spitalfields Winter festival, with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, is entirely devoted to the composer, and forms a primetime part of Radio 3's pre-Christmas buildup.
Christ Church, Hawksmoor's gleaming, clean-lined temple in east London, was still new when Bach composed the six cantatas that make up the Christmas Oratorio. But no congregration would have sat through all six end to end. They were written to be performed on different days; Gardiner has thus teamed each with a Brandenburg Concerto and one of Bach's six surviving choral motets, in hour-long programmes.
The first two concerts found Gardiner on vintage form, energising the orchestral playing into sweeping phrases and shaping the choral lines tirelessly. The poised contemplation of Komm, Jesu, Komm offered some counterbalance to the jubilant trumpeting of the first cantata, in which tenor Nicholas Mulroy was a persuasive, airy-sounding Evangelist. In between, the agile viola soloists Jane Rogers and Stella Wilkinson dug in to an energetic, chamber-scale Brandenburg No 6. Two nights later, the pastoral second cantata, all earthy yet soothing oboes, was preceded by an ebullient Lobet den Herrn and the Brandenburg No 4, with virtuosic violin and recorder solos.
Inevitably, some of the finer details swirl up into the church's high tower, and when the floor vibrates, it might be a resonant bass note, or the number 67 bus to Dalston. But the feeling this venue offers of being tucked away in a beautiful capsule is inspiring. Amid the fluster and tat of a city Christmas, a Bach-less festival is not unthinkable, but it is undesirable.
Erica Jeal
www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/dec/19/classicalmusicandopera-festivals
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |