Dunedin Consort at Wigmore Hall was a seriously stylish send-off to the year ✒️ Thanks to Bach specialist John Butt and his adept musicians, there was no shortage of fireworks in this New Year’s Eve concert ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 🟠 AlexaCoghlan
on New Year’s Eve felt a bit like leaving the party behind. But thanks to Bach specialist John Butt and his adept musicians, there was no shortage of fireworks or of reasons to celebrate.
Spilling right to the edges of the small stage , nearly 30 musicians turned the hall into a cathedral on a feast day. Timpani and trumpets let rip in Antonio Caldara’s, before stepping back to allow the work’s shifting textures – a guttural duet between cello and bassoon, two oboes locked in an elegant anything-you-can-do battle, a sweet-toned solo violin darting and dancing across strings – to emerge.
Two Bach cantatas completed the concert, each composed for Christmas Day. Luxury, after the restraint of Advent – the darkness, the waiting, the muted colours – to burst out into such brightness. opens with a runaway train of a chorus: once launched there’s no getting off. Eight singers – an army of generals who supplied soloists as well as ensemble – propelled us forward, Butt directing vigorously from the harpsichord. Tenor Hugo Hymas gave us a moment of breath-catching contemplation in his fluid “Ihn gedanken”, while countertenor James Hall added a plaintive note of Lutheran self-loathing with a vivid account of “Ach Herr”, man reduced to a sinuous “worm”.
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