Reviews

THE TIMES

Great Venetians, Royal Albert Hall, London (28 Jul 2006)

****

Everything about this Prom was Italian: the 17th-century Venetian music, the heat — and the fact that it started on Wednesday and finished in the early hours of Thursday. OK, it was only ten past midnight when we sprinted for the last Tube. But why does the BBC do this? It spoils people’s enjoyment if a concert is allowed to run so long that they get anxious, or actually leave, before the final piece: Giovanni Gabrieli’s exquisite 20-part Dulcis Jesu.

Pity, for this was the most intriguing Prom I have heard so far this year. Nearly all this music was written to exploit the balconies of St Mark’s Venice, with different groups of voices and instruments batting the music to and fro like a shuttlecock. The Albert Hall is no Italian basilica, but it certainly has the space, and Sir John Eliot Gardiner exploited this imaginatively.
His excellent Monteverdi Choir, plus the English Baroque Soloists and the authentic wind instruments of His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts, were grouped on three separated platforms around the arena, with stage and organ gallery also used. So Prommers had a real surround-sound experience, plus the inexpressible joy of standing inches from Sir John himself as he conducted from the centre of the arena in a dapper black tunic with lime-green cuffs.

Monteverdi’s Four-Part Mass framed the concert, and was sung with astonishing contrasts of pace, articulation and volume. I can’t believe that the Gardiner of the 1970s ever imagined himself conducting Monteverdi with this degree of ultra-romantic expression, but I loved it. And it was good to hear the Gabrieli instrumental sonatas treated as delicate chamber music. Rarities by Rigatti and Grandi, and a sublime Salve Regina by Cavalli completed the programme.

Richard Morrison

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