The Book of Madrigals: Leipzig, town of Music and In lighter mood:  amarcord, Wigmore Hall, London. 26.01.07. (ED)

 

It is not often these days that a professional a capella vocal sextet comes along, even rarer that such groups are of amarcord’s quality. Admittedly, I went to the concert following a tip-off about the group, but I was scarcely prepared for the sheer musicality and jewel-like clarity of their singing.

 

Founded in 1992, amarcord are all former members of the St Thomas’s Boys Choir in Leipzig, and this being the group’s UK Wigmore Hall debut they gave a flavour of the breadth of their repertoire. Introducing numbers from the stage – with a good deal of humour along the way – they served a first half of nineteen bite-size madrigals in English, German, French, Italian and Spanish with near impeccable linguistic fluency. Indeed, the only minor regret might have been that some pieces of longer duration were not present to vary the offering. For an English audience perhaps the works by Dowland, Morley and Weelkes were easiest to grasp, but also what joys there are to be had in works by the likes of Juan Vasquez and Thoinot Arbeau. amarcord does them a great service by bringing their music before the public.

 

Qualities that mark out amarcord’s approach to music making are easily identifiable. Chief among them is the tonal balance of the sextet and awareness of vocal nuance within their singing. If, from the start, the excellence of two singers in particular – first tenor Wolfram Lattke and second bass Holger Krause – was apparent due to their distinctive timbres and subtly drawn musicality, the rest of the group formed a barely less favourable impression as the evening progressed. Wolfram Lattke’s high tenor possessed near counter-tenor clarity, when combined with keen facial gestures his ability to convey much of the humour or seriousness behind the texts proved beneficial to the performances. Second tenor, Martin Lattke, Wolfram’s brother, possessed a much dryer tone, somewhat akin to the traditional English tenor, brought a different shading to his part, which third tenor Dietrich Barth complemented unassumingly. Baritone Frank Ozimek filled the middle range with lightness of touch, perhaps too lightly at times, given the relative weights of both the tenor and bass parts. Daniel Knauft, the first bass, brought a dry wit and wisdom to proceedings.

 

Stylistically, the programme of the second half was more varied than that of the first. Keen to show that Leipzig is a city not just associated with Johann Sebastian Bach, five works by composers broadened the musical landscape. Schumann’s Die Minnesänger is not one of his stronger compositions, even when heard alongside works by the less well known Carl Steinacker or Carl Friedrich Zöllner. The former afforded opportunities for discrete word-pointing mixed with delicate harmonic touches to capture the spirit of a moonlit night, whereas the latter’s piece was more concerned with satiating the bodily needs of good food and wine. Just as in the piece by Mendelssohn that followed, one sensed that amarcord are indeed bon viveurs who are at home and relaxed in each others company.

 

The short song cycle, unseen blue, written for them by Bernd Franke proved to be an uneven composition. With the four songs providing contrasting rather than unifying material it never really hung together as a work. Ranging from the melancholy via a pastiche of Bernstein’s lighter style to the highly canonical, amarcord nonetheless made the most of its individual parts.

 

More entertaining were the songs chosen for the “In Lighter Mood” section. A jazzed-up vocalise version of Fugue in C minor from the Well-Tempered Clavier stated things off, before moving into Lullaby of Birdland, a Finnish song about the secrets of reindeer and that barbershop standard, Drybones. All were performed with wit and feeling to round off a most satisfying evening. Hopefully it will not be long before amarcord sing in the UK again.

 

Evan Dickerson