Best of Monteverdi Choir
Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 4/8/2025
Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, Jonathan Sells, Choral Director and conductor
While Storm Floris rages outside and even the Lady Boys of Bangkok have decamped from Lothian Road, a decent-sized audience gathers to hear the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists under conductor Jonathan Sells. We’re well-prepared for their programme of Purcell, two Bachs and Handel by Joanna Wyld’s excellent online essay, and by Sells’ audio introduction to these works of lamentation, warfare and joy. A choir member for nine years (2009-2018) before becoming its Choral Director in 2025, he speaks of the interaction between singers and audience, and urges us to listen “with our whole bodies.”
What could go wrong? In a word - lighting. The auditorium lights are dimmed, an eerie red glow surrounds the organ pipes, white lights with runic scribbles are on the side walls, and ‘Edinburgh International Festival’ shines brightly over all! The gloom and distracting effects hinder communication, and do a disservice to the musicians, the audience, and, not least the composers.
The twenty-eight-strong choir sing with nuance and precision in the unaccompanied Purcell and in the first Bach Cantata, played with the English Baroque soloists (strings only). On either side of the orchestra, James Johnstone, organ, and Paolo Zanau, harpsichord, provide continuo with bassists, Kate Brooke and Rosie Moon. The surtitles’ single English lines are whisked away before the choir stops singing the repeated words, leaving us to hear lovely music but without context – my body may be listening but my mind is confused! The first-half’s highlight is Reginald Mobley’s splendid counter-tenor solo, ‘Ach dass ich Wassers gnug hätte.’ Sung front of stage with violin accompaniment, (Bojan Ĉiĉić), harpsichord and theorbo continuo, he certainly communicates Johann Christoph Bach’s lament directly to the audience.
Although it’s funeral music, the J S Bach Cantata ‘Sing to the lord a new song’ expresses joy especially in the speedy upbeat final exhortation to ‘praise God in all his works’. After the interval, we hear Handel’s ‘Dixit Dominus’, with the choir reorganised so that soprano, alto, tenor bass stand from left to right, and the wonderful repetitions of ‘dixit’ fly across the singers from top to bottom of the range. Reginald Mobley’s alto solo again sung at the front is telling and heart-felt. The wrath of the Old Testament God brings out Handel’s love for wordplay – the repeated percussive staccato of ‘conquassabit’ (crushed skulls) is sung with attack. The following restorative soprano duet with its language of water and healing is delivered beautifully by Zoë Brookshaw and Chloë Morgan, (accompanied by dissonant strings and muted choir). But without even an online Latin libretto, the single-line English translation gives us less information than we need to appreciate the work fully, and that’s a shame.
The concert ends with some upbeat Hallelujahs and after applause Jonathan Sells introduces Johann Christoph Bach’s simple hymn, with its solo soprano embellishment in the chorus, ‘World, Good Night’ which inspires our homeward journey.
