Peter Seymour conducted yet another large-scale work on Saturday night.
There is no sign that he is spreading his talents thinly, but somehow he manages to produce a series of ambitious concerts in quick succession with no compromise in quality.
Monteverdi’s famous 1610 Vesperae della Beata Vergine at St Michael-le-Belfrey was given a magnificent performance by the Yorkshire Bach Choir with full, colourful orchestral accompaniment including sackbuts, cornetti, chittarroni and dulcian.
This is a monumental work, which requires a very skilful choir to cover up to ten vocal parts and reveal its polychoral majesty.
And YBC of course are quite equal to the challenge; there was a good balance of voices and a wonderful collection of soloists which made this an appealing and thoroughly enjoyable offering from the start.
Rather than a liturgical sequence, this was a feast for the ears with plainchant sorbets to prepare the palate for the next course.
Some highlights included some stunning singing in the intricate Duo Seraphim; lovely female voices in Ave maris stella, rich full-bodied and joyful; a tremblingly beautiful Esurientes; a very moving Gloria patri; and a lively recorder in the Cima Concerto a due.
St Michael-le-Belfrey is not necessarily a perfect venue from the audience’s point of view, with restricted views and slightly odd acoustics, so that some of the delightful echo effects worked better than others, depending on where you were sitting; but this hardly detracted from the splendour of the banquet and little of the drama of these sections was lost.
Review by Charles Hunt
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