Having heard the whole thing, I agree with the review: although, as M. Bestion admits in his explanation, the Vespers could never have been performed this way in Monteverdi's time--it is not an attempt at"authentic peformance"--it opens a
whole new perspective on the music, and sounds magnificent while doing so.
Mr. Hanlon perceptively notes a resemblance to some of Jordi Savall's explorations of musical styles arising in cultural contact zones around the Medieterrean, on North African as well as European shores. As Bestion points out, Venice in Monteverdi's day "looked to the East, the silk trade, the Greek islands--Constantinople too. It hosted many merchant traders, Turks, Persians, also Sephardic Jews and Armenians."
What one gets is not exactly a performance of Monteverdi's Vespers, insofar as the score that has come down to us may be taken as a reliable record of the composer's intentions. Rather, it is a new work that builds outward from what Monteverdi left us. The five psalm settings are done in faux-bourdon, then repeated, more or less as Monteverdi wrote them. But there are invented transitions and re-scorings. The instrumental introduction to "Laetatus sum" is repeated several times, with richer orchestration as it goes, building up a tremendous head of rhythmic steam that the singers take up and sustain. At the end of the echoing tenor duet in "Audi Coelum," the lower strings are given a wonderful bridge to the entrance of the choir on "Omnes." Never heard it before, because it wasn't there.
As is usual in other performances, the pieces for soloists are ornamented. But the ornamentation draws on styles one would have heard in Venice, but not necessarily emitted from a Christian church.
Quibbles: Well, sometimes I would like more intimacy in the settings for soli. "Nigra Sunt" is wonderfully ornamented and sung with growing richness of instrumental texture and fullness of voice, like the earth bursting into flower in spring. "Pulchra es" has been more delicate (and sexier) elsewhere. And I may skip the faux-bourdon prologues to the psalms sometimes. They strike me as less interesting than everything else, which is full of delightful and unexpected innovations.
Should it be anyone's only Vespers of 1610? No. You'd want at least three: 1) one of the best small scale performances, with one or two voices on a part (Parrott, McCreesh, and Stubbs are my favorites). And a grand one that sticks with the score, perhaps adding plainchant antiphons: King, or Gardiner in San Marco, though in the latter, the solo pieces sound a bit lost in space. And this one, certainly
Message Thread
« Back to index | View thread »
Thank you for taking part in the MusicWeb International Forum.
Len Mullenger - Founder of MusicWeb