Monteverdi Choir 50th Anniversary Concert, 5th March, 19:45

[amcluesent]

Looking forward to this, historically informed performance is always welcome on Radio 3

[doversoul1]

Live from King's College, Cambridge
Anyone listening? JEG’s talking to Martin Handley now. The music is about to start!!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03wptzj

You’ve got in first!

[Old Grumpy]

Live from King's College, Cambridge
Anyone listening?

Yep.

Brilliant!

[Padraig]

Live from King's College, Cambridge
Anyone listening? JEG’s talking to Martin Handley now. The music is about to start!!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03wptzj

You’ve got in first!

Listening doversoul.
Also, PM received. Will do.

[DracoM]

One of my all time favourite pieces
BUT
to my ears, it sounds wildly, wilfully self-indulgent. And actually, very dated.

Probably you have to be there. In KCC's acoustic, I'd love to know from anyone there how much of the tiny filigree in pretty well every phrase would come across as anything but a blur?

Nicholas Mulroy worth the entrance money.

[doversoul1]

It is easy to imagine how the performance of this work must have sounded/felt to the audience 50 years ago. It maybe that we have been spoilt by too many CDs but to me, this sounds like an English church choir making a good attempt at a Monteverdi. And it may be my radio but the singing sounds rather muffled. Ah well. Historical interest…

[Bryn]

Sorry. I gave up and am spinning:



instead.

[doversoul1]

Sorry. I gave up and am spinning:



instead.

same here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrYXn6hkpZ0

[edashtav]

Jeggers becomes Jaggers

One of my all time favourite pieces
BUT
to my ears, it sounds wildly, wilfully self-indulgent. And actually, very dated.

Probably you have to be there. In KCC's acoustic, I'd love to know from anyone there how much of the tiny filigree in pretty well every phrase would come across as anything but a blur?

Nicholas Mulroy worth the entrance money.

Spot on, DracoM, especially your line that I've emboldened. A performance with some good elements but coarsened by over-familiarity: the smooth was judged insufficiently exciting and contrasts and accents were made larger than life.

Less is more.

[gamba]

I'll stay with Concerto Italiano & Rinaldo Alessandrini for a CD performance.

[kernelbogey]

I enjoyed this, and it seemed as much a celebration of JEG's 1964 pioneering as of the piece itself. I have his St Mark's recording and don't know others. I listened to a bit of the L'Arpeggiata via Doversoul's link before it stopped abruptly and wouldn't restart: very different from what I'm familiar with. Any recommendations for a different take from JEG's?

[doversoul1]

This is by Harnoncourt (not meant to be a recommendation, as I've just found it)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKzKrRfMOUc

I know listening to snippets are not the same but you can have some ideas.

http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/work.php?id=59046

Were any of the Forum members at the original performance? What was it that made it so extraordinary?

[kernelbogey]

Were any of the Forum members at the original performance? What was it that made it so extraordinary?

The implication of JEG's pre-concert interview with Martin Handley was that JEG had almost re-discovered the piece (although he also acknowledged IIRC Thurston Dart telling him where he could find a microfilm of the MS). I believe that Monteverdi was, indeed, little known at the time - but other board members may have a different perspective on that period.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

JEG may have "almost re-discovered" the Vespers, but its first British performance had been given at Morley College in the 1940s in a performance conducted by Michael Tippett (who had also led performances of Monteverdi madrigals with the choir). Tippett acknowledged his debt to the pioneering recordings of Monteverdi madrigals made in the 1930s conducted by Nadia Boulanger - who was one of JEG's teachers.

[DracoM]

And let us not forget Dennis Stevens?