The Monteverdi Choir found themselves in the news for the wrong reasons last year when their founder and conductor, John Eliot Gardiner, stepped down following an assault on the bass William Thomas. Christophe Rousset is conducting the group on this current tour, with the music of Bach and Marc-Antoine Charpentier forming the programme.
Gardiner continues to make his presence felt – there was controversy and criticism as the conductor’s new group, Constellation Choir and Orchestra, performed substantially the same repertory at a concert at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie only days before the Monteverdi Choir’s own performance.
This St Martin’s London concert was, however, a notably beautiful occasion. Two of Bach’s Advent cantatas, Schwingt Freudig Euch Empor and Unser Mund Sei Voll Lachens, were prefaced by Charpentier’s Messe de Minuit pour Noël and his Noëls sur les Instruments, a set of transcriptions of French carols for strings and recorders. The carols also form the thematic and melodic basis of the mass itself, where they undergo polyphonic developments of often exceptional beauty.
Rousset, a great interpreter of French baroque, was in his element here, wonderfully capturing the music’s mixture of sensuous immediacy and spiritual depth. The instrumental Noëls were for the most part exuberant and joyous, though Or Nous Dites, Marie, provided a sudden moment of devotional solemnity. At the centre of the mass, similarly, is an extraordinary passage in which time and sound briefly seemed to stand still in contemplation of the mystery of Christ’s incarnation, in contrast with the intricate polyphony that rapturously announces his birth. Purity of line and detailed counterpoint, both vocal and instrumental, were immaculate here, though on occasion the words might have been clearer. The recorders, played by Elizabeth Walker and Annabel Knight, sounded simply exquisite.
Bach’s Advent cantatas also balance reflection with exultation, and the oscillation between intimacy and grandeur was again beautifully done. The opening of Unser Mund Sei Voll Lachens, in which the choir’s elation intrudes on the instrumental ceremonials heard at the outset, was breathtaking, though the emotional kernel, in some respects, rests in both works with the soloists. Soprano Hilary Cronin sounded ravishing in the climactic aria of Schwingt Freudig Euch Empor, while mezzo Rebecca Leggett sang with great warmth of tone and fierce declamation in the dark meditation on man’s fall and redemption at the centre of Unser Mund. Ruairi Bowen was the elegant tenor, Florian Störtz the agile, wonderfully committed baritone.
