Reviews

DAILY TELEGRAPH

St James's Church, Spanish Place, Schuetz and Durufle (9 Jul 2008)

Depth of sound: Monteverdi Choir

This concert brought some of the best-known performers in Baroque music - John Eliot Gardiner and his Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists - into a beautiful but far from prestigious venue, the neo-Gothic Catholic church of St James in central London.

The choice of venue and the musical programme was a reminder of the change that's come over Sir John since he undertook his vast "Bach pilgrimage", bringing Bach's sacred cantatas to churches and cathedrals all over the globe. These days, he gravitates more towards sacred music, performed in sacred spaces.

But the change is evident in more immediate ways. Gardiner is a famously severe man, capable of bringing some Biblical fear and trembling to his rehearsals. But at this concert he seemed conciliatory, even benign. He coaxed the performers, rather than ruling them with a rod of iron.

And he now acknowledges the audience and the world in general, in a way he never used to bother with. He dedicated the performance of the two Requiems in the concert to the memory of the victims of the bombing outrage of July 7, 2005.

By then we'd already heard two marvellous motets in the polychoral style of the early Baroque, where phrases are echoed between choirs of voices and instruments.

It's a potentially exciting style, and the temptation is to separate the choirs as much as possible to play up the drama. But Gardiner kept them close together, which was more interesting because it highlighted the metaphysical puzzles in the words.

In Guerrero's Duo Seraphim, the text asks: "Is the Holy Trinity One or Three?" The music's ambiguous sound, simultaneously blended and separate, gave the answer.

Later, in the Requiem by the German Baroque composer Heinrich Schütz (or Musikalische Exequien, to give it its proper title), Gardiner did make use of the church's galleries to separate some singers. Again, the effect was to give depth to the sound, rather than drama.

But the really striking thing was the care Gardiner brought to the words. We could really feel the way their rhythms pushed against the rhythm of the music. And Schütz's vivid way of picturing the meaning was highlighted, too, without sacrificing the music's flow.

Equal care was lavished on the biggest piece of the evening, Maurice Duruflé's Requiem. If its self-consciously archaic "holiness" soon wore thin - as it always does for me - that was hardly the performers' fault.

Ivan Hewett

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