Review - Monteverdi Vespers

Saturday 25th April 2009
Crouch End Festival Chorus
St James Church, Muswell Hill
Claudio Monteverdi – Vespers of 1610

If only. If only they had held back for another eight months I could have used the word quadricentenary in this concert review. Opportunities like this only come along every four hundred years. Still, at least it’s another addition to the spell checker!

It is likely that when the Vespers were first performed, it would have been by 20 to 25 singers. Last Saturday’s performance in St James saw Crouch End Festival Chorus at full strength with five times as many voices as Monteverdi would have heard. Over manning? Not at all: the Chorus has a wonderfully gentle touch that allows it the sensitivity and grace usually associated with a much smaller ensemble.

It was a full house sell out with at least one ugly scene on the door as a ticketless enthusiast tried to blag his way in. His efforts were rewarded as was every member of the audience gathered for this remarkable performance.

The opening Deus in Adjutorium was delivered by the excellent tenor Jon English as a call to prayer. More soloists followed with, in Dixit Dominus, the first hearing of an angelic pairing of sopranos Emma Kirkby and Miriam Allan. They were supported with the usual passion and technical brilliance that the Chorus brings to pieces like this.

Oddly, in the third section (taken from the song of Solomon) a large hairy man delivered the words “I am black but beautiful a daughter of Jerusalem.” I suppose that Claudio knew what he was about.

The chorus was excellent as were all the soloists but there was something missing. Following a recent refurbishment there is a lot less exposed stone and a lot more deep pile carpet in St James. Try as they might, Messrs English Rashbrook couldn’t achieve the wonderful echoic reverberation that a piece like this demands.

The orchestra was a composite of the Monteverdi String Band and the English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble. Their playing was sensitive and perfectly complimented the voices. Their stage craft might be improved a little though  – during the Duo Seraphim, one of the sackbut players decided to drain the spit from his instrument as tenor Roy Rashbrook was delivering words from the gospel of St John.

David Temple used the space well – he wisely arranged the chorus on three sides of the altar and allowed a singer off stage to provide the heavenly echo in the Audi Coelum .

The great finale didn’t fail to excite. The Magnificat, giving almost every permutation of voices and soloists their own sections, was superb. We finished quite early and  some felt that a little more could have been added to the program (Spem in Alium possibly) but the audience left beaming and looking forward to CEFC’s next performance.

David Winskill in the Ham & High