With characteristic ingenuity, I Fagiolini have looked beyond the obvious for their celebration of Monteverdi’s 450th anniversary, and with it their own 30th, to bring to the public ear what they call The Other Vespers, namely not the Vespers of 1610. A collection evocatively named Selva Morale e Spirituale – A Moral and Spiritual Wood – dating from 1641 is the source of these other vespers. The handful of Fagiolini singers performing them at Brecon Cathedral, under the direction of Robert Hollingworth at the chamber organ, seemed to catapult the past into the present with the immediacy of the experience.
There was a single singer to each part and much varying of the number and disposition of the eight voices. Highly individual timbres lent a greater clarity to the weaving of the contrapuntal lines, often imitated in close proximity by two violins and by Gawain Glenton’s cornett ornamentation. The I Fagiolini sound, by turns gutsy and refined, and their rendering of Monteverdi’s sinuous chromaticism, in particular, worked well in the cathedral, with the final Salve Regina made memorable by Matthew Long’s tenor.
Vivaldi’s concerto The Four Seasons is such obviously familiar territory that it might seem best avoided. But Rachel Podger – director of the Brecon Baroque festival and her ensemble of the same name – has the knack of breathing new life into the repertoire. She did precisely that by prefacing each of the concertos with the descriptive sonnets Vivaldi had originally matched to the music. The words were read first in Italian by lutenist Daniele Caminiti – earlier the expressive soloist in Vivaldi’s lute concerto (RV230) – and then in English by Podger, and this approach permitted the musical embodiment of the personae and meteorological phenomena to emerge in fresh light.
It underlined that Podger is a musical force: her own playing combines elan and finesse, and she galvanises her fellow players in vibrant, spirited performances. Here again there was just one instrument to a part, too spare a texture for some tastes perhaps, but focusing the character of the musical dialogue, notably with cellist Alison McGillivray. The final season, Winter, was the concerto’s true culmination, with keyboard player Marcin Świątkiewicz’s change to the organ for the slow movement and allegro finale helping to paint colours that set Podger’s violin in further brilliant relief.
• Brecon Baroque Festival Orchestra is at Theatr Brycheiniog, Brecon, on 30 October. Box office: 01874 611622. Brecon Baroque will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 31 October.
