This isn’t an easy
work successfully to bring off as several
recordings have shown. And it’s to this
performance’s credit that so much is
neat and stylish and well thought through
– although it won’t dislodge primary
recommendations. The Concerto Polacco
plays the opening Overture and Interlude
with crisp attention to detail and the
various instrumental soloists perform
with good phrasing throughout – organ,
flute, and cello principally. The chorus
sounds small but well-focused, smoothly
blended, and they cope with the demands
of singing in English very competently.
Which leaves the solo singers; soprano
Dorothee Mields is musical and has a
good range, though she doesn’t quite
make the most of her opportunities in
the great soprano and cello aria What
passion cannot Music raise
where memories of April Cantelo and
– wasn’t it? – cellist Anthony Pleeth
are not effaced.
Mark Wilde, a fine
Bach singer, colours and clothes his
recitative From harmony, from
heav’nly harmony with intelligence
– listen to the desiccated tone he adopts
for the word ‘dry’ in the phrase and
moist, and dry. His tone is finely
focused in The trumpet’s loud clangour,
the tenor’s moment of declamatory
glory, albeit there’s a bit of an acoustic
veil over the choral contribution here.
Things could be more incisive and exciting.
The principal flautist shines in The
soft complaining flute and the organ
is to the fore in But Oh! What art
can teach.
The competition is
severe. Amongst such Gomez, Tear and
Ledger on ASV still exercise a persuasive
hold on allegiances (all male choir,
modern instruments), preferable in terms
of immediacy and idiomatic choral singing
to Palmer, Rolfe Johnson and Harnoncourt
on Teldec unless your priorities are
those of original instruments. I’ve
not heard the Hogwood on Arabesque.
Short playing time.
Jonathan Woolf
Dorothee Mields (soprano) 