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Music review: Schütz, The Christmas Story (Wigmore Hall); Bach and Charpentier (St Martin-in-the-Fields)

by
17 January 2025

Fiona Hook attended two Baroque concerts just before Christmas

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RETURNING to the Wigmore Hall for a pre-Christmas concert, Jonathan Cohen and Archangelo gave a programme of 17th-century German choral works by Heinrich Schütz.

The opening “Hodie Christus Natus Est”, which combined precision and balance with full-throated Christmassy joy, set the tone for the evening. Nine singers, also professional soloists, shone in both Latin and German with “Siehe, es erschien der Engel des Herren”, “Heute is Christus der Herr geboren”, and the plangent “Auf dem Gebirge”, in which Rachel laments for her murdered children. Praetorius’s well-known carol “Es ist ein Ros entsprungen”, was sweetly sung by four voices to a soft accompaniment of strings and recorders.

The main work was Schütz’s Die Weinachtshistorie (the Christmas story), directed by Cohen from the harpsichord. Composed in 1660, when the composer was 75, it uses Luther’s translations of Matthew and Luke to tell the story of the nativity and the flight into Egypt. In a foretaste of Bach’s Passions, the work is held together by the Evangelist’s narrative recitatives, interspersed with eight intermedi, brief episodes sung by the protagonists.

In a confident and committed reading, the tenor Nicholas Mulroy was a compelling Evangelist, unfolding the story as if telling it for the first time to a circle of eager listeners. Sadly, the other soloists were unnamed, as they were excellent. Herod’s threats, with their dark repetition of “forschet fleissig” had serious bite. The bright soprano Angel put real urgency into her call to flee to Egypt, and the choir were wholehearted in their repetitions of “grosse, grosse Freude”. Doron Sherwin’s amazing cornet virtuosity over a pair each of violins and viols made for some interesting instrumental textures.

 

FROM Germany to France, with Marc-Antoine Charpentier at St Martin-in-the-Fields. The Council of Trent had forbidden the use of secular tunes in church. French composers got round this by writing instrumental carol settings for church performance, and we heard nine of Charpentier’s Noëls sur les instruments, with warm and incisive playing from the English Baroque Soloists, particularly Annabel Knight and Elizabeth Walker on various recorders. The tunes wholly or in fragments reappear in his Messe de Minuit pour Noël, as surprising for its first audience as hearing “Jingle bells” mid-service. Who would have thought that “Joseph est bien marié” would make a lively, swinging Kyrie, or that “Ou s’en vont ces gais bergers?” would work as a “Quoniam”? Charpentier did.

Bach’s imaginings and what he actually heard, producing a cantata every week, were probably quite different. His heart would have been gladdened by the blend of warmth and technical mastery of Cantatas 36 and 110. The Monteverdi Choir has had its troubles recently, leading to the retirement of its founder, Sir John Eliot Gardiner.

There was no hint of this in the musicians’ obvious rapport with the conductor, Christophe Rousset. The soloists seemed transported by joy. The alto Rebecca Leggett, surely embarking on a distinguished career, sang “Ach Herr, was ist ein Menschenkind”, eyes closed in rapture. The hearty “Wilkommen!” of bass-baritone Florian Stoerz’s “Willkommen, werter Schatz” conveyed a real eagerness for God. Soprano Hilary Cronin’s duet with the violinist Madeleine Easton in “Auch mit gedämpften” was spine-tinglingly lovely.

It falls to the reviewer to attend some very pleasant concerts. Occasionally there’s one that you know will rest in your memory down the years. This was one of those.

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