Reviews

THE FINANCIAL TIMES

Residency at Spitalfields Music (17 Dec 2008)

Four stars
The ghost of Christmas Past still haunts Spitalfields. Audiences whose memories go back five years or more will recall winter evenings spent in the chill dereliction of Hawksmoor’s grand church, looking at the crumbling plasterwork and wondering if the music would finish before the blood in one’s veins turned to ice.

How everything has changed. In the splendid surroundings of the restored Christ Church the Spitalfields Winter Festival offers a prestigious programme of events – a residency by the Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists and John Eliot Gardiner heads this year’s programme – and the new heating system adds a comfortable glow to the proceedings.

The residency of Gardiner and his performers covers six concerts, plus supporting talks and events. With a mathematical exactness of which Bach would have approved, each concert includes one of the six cantatas that make up his Christmas Oratorio, one of the six Brandenburg Concertos and one of the six German motets.

Monday’s opening concert made an uplifting start. The best came first with choral singing in the motet “Komm, Jesu, komm” that was exceptional even by the Monteverdi Choir’s high standards. The interweaving parts of Bach’s choral writing had a rich, expressive independence almost like a full symphony orchestra – brilliantly achieved and deeply moving.

By using just seven musicians from the English Baroque Soloists, the performance of the Brandenburg Concerto No 6 was swift, light and agile. The expressive potential of the music, however, felt constrained. The urgent rhythmic jog of the opening movement was the kind of playing one might want on one’s iPod to get the adrenaline pumping at the gym.

Then, for “Jauchzet, frohlocket, auf preiset die Tage”, the first of the cantatas, the stage was filled with so many performers that if anybody moved, the music on the stands went flying. Gardiner set swift speeds, with a lift to the rhythms that reflect the music’s origins in dance, all to tremendously ebullient effect, with good solo singers and impeccable choral singing. Bach composed the Christmas Oratorio within five years of the completion of Hawksmoor’s Christ Church, and at this concert both gleamed as if on the day they were new.
Richard Fairman

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