Academy of Ancient Music, Milton Court, London, review: Brilliantly kaleidoscopic
The conductor Richard Egarr and members of the Academy of Ancient Music performed the music of Monteverdi – but it was the sopranos Carolyn Sampson and Rowan Pierce who stole the show
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Your support makes all the difference.“Head-banging, bonkers” was how Richard Egarr described the music with which he and his colleagues from the Academy of Ancient Music were going to intersperse their programme of motets and psalm-settings by Monteverdi. About the composer in question – Dario Castello – absolutely nothing is known beyond his name, plus the fact that he took minor orders to free himself from the laws that bound ordinary people in 17th-century Venice. As we soon found out, his sonatas were commensurately anarchic, shifting violently in tempo and mood, and breaking all the then-reigning rules of harmony.
But combos which delivered them here varied from harpsichord or organ (Egarr) plus theorbo lute (Paula Chateauneuf) to three strings plus two gamey old instruments – the wood-and-leather cornetto (Josue Melendez Pelaez) and the dulcian, a proto-bassoon played with great virtuosity by Benny Aghassi – and the effect was brilliantly kaleidoscopic.
But this superb evening belonged to two sopranos – Carolyn Sampson and Rowan Pierce – whose duets and solos reflected Monteverdi at his most gravely serene. Pierce, being younger, may not yet possess Sampson’s super-refined control of phrasing and dynamics, but their voices made a lovely meld. Monteverdi’s music maintained a graceful equality between them, letting them interlace, echo each other, and at climactic moments soar off solo into the empyrean.
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