Music for the Millennium

By John Sidgwick

LONDON, 7 December1998— The Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists, under the leadership of their founder and conductor, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, rounded off their recent European tour with an outstanding concert at the Barbican Hall in London on 3 December.

The programme consisted of Vivaldi's Gloria, RV 589, J.S. Bach's cantata Christ lag in Todes Banden, BWV 4 and Handel's Dixit Dominus. The contrasting styles of the three works enabled the performers to display the full range of their talents. There was exuberance and exaltation in the Vivaldi, searching inwardness in the Bach and an exciting feeling of discovery in the way in which the artists protrayed the ideas of the young Handel in Italy.

It has long been Gardiner's practice to entrust whenever possible solo items to members of his choir. His aim, here, is both artistic and didactic. He feels that there is greater cohesion to the performance when the soloists step out from the ranks to sing their pieces and then rejoin their colleagus; the atmosphere created is quite different from that which prevails when a group of soloists, however distinguished, arrives on stage and sits out events until the moment comes for them to perform. In addition, Gardiner is always anxious to give members of his choir the chance to take on the responsibility of solo items, a valuable stimulus to the furtherance of their careers.

Such a policy was more than justified by the Barbican concert. Each work had its own architecture and the evening as a whole was held together by a great arch of fervour. The choir sound was glorious, the orchestra played with intensity and springing alertness and each of the soloists made a magic contribution to the whole.

At a reception following the concert, Gardiner outlined the plans laid for his singers and players to celebrte the millennium. The Bach 2000 project will take the artists on a pilgrimage around Europe performing and recording the entire corpus of Bach's cantatas in churches and on the appropriate days within the space of a single year. This remarkable undertaking , backed up by a complete revision and republication of the Breitkopf and Härtel scores must surely be the ultilmately-suitable way of saluting the music of the last thousand years and greeting the new millennium. Countless claims can be made for countless composers as being of fundamental importance in the history of western music. But, as musician after musician of every type and ilk will agree— classical instrumentalist, jazz pianist, composer and a host of others - "one always comes back to Bach". And more, probably, than in almost all the rest of his music, it is the cantatas that contain the essential of him.

The Monterverdi choir and the English Baroque Soloists, conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner, will be performing Bach cantatas in the Cathedral of San Marco, Milan on 9 December, in St Giles's Church, Cripplegate, London on 11 and 12 December and in Southwark Cathedral on 21 December.