CHURCH TIMES, 29 SEPTEMBER 2023
This late celebration in Hadleigh was
enjoyed by Garry Humphreys
THE Suffolk Villages Festival began in
1988 as the Stoke by Nayland Festival of Georgian Music, and since then has
gone from strength to strength, offering programmes of music from the Middle
Ages to the 19th century, sacred and secular, vocal and instrumental, including
semi-staged and concert performances of early operas, all under the artistic
direction of the musicologist, harpsichordist, and conductor Peter Holman.
Although there are concerts from autumn
to spring, the Festival itself takes place over the August Bank Holiday, this
year encompassing music by Bach (at Stoke by Nayland), Mozart, Haydn and
Beethoven (the Revolutionary Drawing Room Quartet at Wivenhoe), Elizabethan and
Jacobean virginals music (Steven Devine at Sudbury), and ending with Purcell’s The
Fairy Queen (directed by Peter Holman at Hadleigh).
It was at St Mary’s, Hadleigh, that
this year’s Festival opened with a concert postponed from last October because
of Covid: “Heinrich Schütz: Drama, Virtuosity & Splendour”, featuring the
tenor Charles Daniels with the vocal ensemble Psalmody and the John Jenkins
Consort, directed by Peter Holman. The concert was originally planned to mark
the 350th anniversary in 2022 of the death of Heinrich Schütz.
Schütz was Johann Sebastian Bach’s
greatest predecessor, renowned for his vivid and profound biblical scenes — “a
counterpart to Rembrandt”. The focus was on his work for the Dresden Court
during the Thirty Years’ War, with music ranging from virtuoso solo motets
(sung by Daniels) to large-scale pieces for multiple soloists, divided choirs,
a five-part string consort, harpsichord, and organ.
A pre-concert talk by Professor Stephen
Rose of Royal Holloway, University of London — “Schütz and the Thirty Years’
War” — was an enthralling and illuminating introduction to the
background. It pointed out the limitations imposed by the War and resulting in
music on a smaller scale than would have been normal (and musicians sometimes
not receiving payment for a year or more), besides reflecting the spirit of the
times.
Schütz, well aware of developments in
Italy, spent time in Venice in the early years of the 17th century, studying
with Monteverdi and subsequently using Italian-style ornamentation and
sometimes Latin words, which did not conflict with Schütz’s German
Protestantism; for Latin was regarded as a sort of lingua franca.
What this concert demonstrated more
than anything was Schütz’s remarkable range of textures, emotions, and
atmosphere, deriving from the use of different forces: solos, groups of voices,
and the full choir. Striking moments were Himmel und Erde for
three basses and Saul, Saul, was verfolgst du mich?, with its
restless invocations of the crowd.
The heaviest responsibility was that of
Charles Daniels, who sang several of Schütz’s solo pieces from Symphoniae
Sacrae and the Geistliche Konzerte, besides taking part in
larger-scale works, dispatching the coloratura with intense conviction.
Soloists from Psalmody were also heard, the sopranos Gill Wilson and Annabel Malton
and the tenor Zachary Kleanthous being particularly worthy of mention.
There was instrumental music, too, from
the John Jenkins Consort. For me, the highlight of the evening was their
playing of Johann Rosenmüller’s Sonata da Camera (1667) — such delicacy and
vitality. The bass-violin continuo player, Louise Jameson, must be
congratulated for her artistic underpinning of every piece in the programme.
Drama, virtuosity, and splendour was,
indeed, what we heard from these different combinations of voices and
instruments — heavenly music despite the War — and an imaginative and enjoyable
introduction to this year’s Festival.
