Dunedin Consort Carolyn Sampson sings Bach St Giles' Cathedral Edinburgh 27th September 2024 Review
Dunedin Consort: Carolyn Sampson sings Bach at St Giles’ Cathedral Edinburgh was the perfect location for the opening concert in this 2024/25 season of music from this always interesting Baroque ensemble.
The headline concert for this evening’s music, J S Bach’s Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen ("Exult in God in every land") with Carolyn Sampson (soprano) and Paul Sharp (trumpet) and Dunedin Consort, always had the potential to allow something special to happen and this performance did not fail to do that. The work is Bach's only church cantata scored for a solo soprano and trumpet (Wikipedia), and the choice of St Giles’ Cathedral as the venue for this performance certainly added much to the experience of listening to this wonderful music.
This was a very varied musical programme and it had more than a few surprises for us all tonight. Many people will quite rightly associate Dunedin Consort as being one of the world’s leading Baroque ensembles, so the first music tonight, Concerto Grosso in E-flat major by Pietro Antonio Locatelli (1695-1764), one of the outstanding violinists and composers of his day, you would expect to be in their repertoire.
The companion piece (well almost) to this work, Jocelyn Morlock’s (1969 – 2003) Golden with its whispered text and sung wordless vowels (Carolyn Sampson) feeding the voice into wine-glass harmonics, may seem far removed from the first work, but despite some 300 years separating the two, they clearly have many similarities. For one, I would like to see Dunedin Consort explore this contemporary side of their repertoire more.
George Frideric Handel is always a safe space for any ensemble or orchestra to enter into as his work always has that ability to remain fresh and relevant to the listener. To do this, however, requires musicians of not only talent, but also musical flexibility, as Handel put more than a few challenges and surprises into his work for anyone attempting to perform them. That said, Organ Concerto in B-flat major and Concerto Grosso in A minor both found the perfect ensemble and acoustic space this evening.
If you are reading this review and have for some reason thought that baroque music is not for you, maybe it is time to think again as you will probably be surprised how familiar to you much of this music is. This, after all, is where the musical building blocks of so much of what we all hear around us today as contemporary music were first created.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
The headline concert for this evening’s music, J S Bach’s Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen ("Exult in God in every land") with Carolyn Sampson (soprano) and Paul Sharp (trumpet) and Dunedin Consort, always had the potential to allow something special to happen and this performance did not fail to do that. The work is Bach's only church cantata scored for a solo soprano and trumpet (Wikipedia), and the choice of St Giles’ Cathedral as the venue for this performance certainly added much to the experience of listening to this wonderful music.
This was a very varied musical programme and it had more than a few surprises for us all tonight. Many people will quite rightly associate Dunedin Consort as being one of the world’s leading Baroque ensembles, so the first music tonight, Concerto Grosso in E-flat major by Pietro Antonio Locatelli (1695-1764), one of the outstanding violinists and composers of his day, you would expect to be in their repertoire.
The companion piece (well almost) to this work, Jocelyn Morlock’s (1969 – 2003) Golden with its whispered text and sung wordless vowels (Carolyn Sampson) feeding the voice into wine-glass harmonics, may seem far removed from the first work, but despite some 300 years separating the two, they clearly have many similarities. For one, I would like to see Dunedin Consort explore this contemporary side of their repertoire more.
George Frideric Handel is always a safe space for any ensemble or orchestra to enter into as his work always has that ability to remain fresh and relevant to the listener. To do this, however, requires musicians of not only talent, but also musical flexibility, as Handel put more than a few challenges and surprises into his work for anyone attempting to perform them. That said, Organ Concerto in B-flat major and Concerto Grosso in A minor both found the perfect ensemble and acoustic space this evening.
If you are reading this review and have for some reason thought that baroque music is not for you, maybe it is time to think again as you will probably be surprised how familiar to you much of this music is. This, after all, is where the musical building blocks of so much of what we all hear around us today as contemporary music were first created.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
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