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Handel - Alexander’s FeastTuesday August 11th 2009"Stealing a march on Judas Maccabaeus, the vocal and instrumental forces of Edinburgh's Ludus Baroque brought Alexander's Feast to Canongate Kirk three days ahead of the festival's official opening concert at the Usher Hall. Intentionally or otherwise it seemed a neat piece of musical subversiveness, the warmth of Handel's celebratory ode brightly scaled to the intimacy of the church's light l7th-century surroundings. For the occasion, conductor Richard Neville-Towle had recruited a glamorous line-up of soloists, with the sweet-toned Katharine Fuge, pride of the Monteverdi Choir, as star soprano. Michael Chance, Ed Lyon and William Berger, respectively romantic, incisive and theatrical, completed the solo quartet, to which the 15 luminous voices of the chorus and timbres of the small orchestra added their own special glow. Though less of a rarity than it once was - and though the bass's biting revenge aria lost its da capo - the music made a captivating impression. Instrumental soloists, not least the expressive cellist, seized their chances. As the light gradually faded beyond the church's clear glass windows, trumpets and drums exploded in part two." Fringe music at its best, as this certainly was, can bring its own exuberant dimension to the Edinburgh Festival. |
Bach - B minor MassThursday August 13th 2009"Ludus Baroque's nights at Canongate Kirk are the ones that matter, not least when the B minor Mass is the work being presented. As an "oracle with an infinitude of messages," as the programme note aptly put it, Bach's music can be presented today in many ways. But in surroundings as airy as Canongate's, this annual performance conducted by Richard Neville-Towle has grown more and more vivid, sonorous enough to prove that 17 choristers and a small baroque band are more than ample for such a building, yet not so racy, in the modern manner, that the music's traditional splendour is lost. The opening chorus, with its shifting intensities, set the tone. The succeeding duet, a luminous intermingling of Katharine Fuge's soprano and Michael Chance's counter-tenor, changed the perspective. The strains of three trumpets, piercing the chorus, changed it again. Music which, in Otto Klemperer's hands once sounded like the inexorable grinding of liturgical machinery, was warmly, ardently voiced. The great work seemed lit from within. Thomas Hobbs was the lyrical tenor, William Berger the bass. The flute obbligati were moments of special beauty. Though not all the work's challenges were fully met, the performance, in front of a packed house, emerged as a gripping integer." |
| by Conrad Wilson, The Herald, 12th September 2009 | By Conrad Wilson, The Herald, 15th September 2009 |
page updated: 26th September 2009