MusicOMH praises Wigmore gala

Reviews

MusicOMH praises Wigmore gala

Barry Creasy, MusicOHM (12 May, 2025)

The evening contained no surprises in terms of performance quality; Stile Antico take blend and nuance extremely seriously, whether singing as the full twelve (as they did for most of the items), or in smaller numbers with one voice to a part… The group treads the fine line of ‘historically informed performance’ perfectly, mingling a consummate understanding of the practice of the period with an attractive regard for the modern listener’s need for the drama of music written since: dynamic, tempo, rhythmic attack and timbre all line up to extract the best sound from the often complex polyphonic material…

It was all absolutely perfect, of course, but a few moments really shone out. The contrast between the two opening items was brilliantly pointed up: Byrd’s Vigilate, a masterpiece of free-composed polyphony, was full of punch and precisely pointed entries, whereas the seven voice parts of Clemens non Papa’s Ego flos campi moved sinuously over each other, delivered with mellifluous tone, rising in dynamic to ‘sicut lilium’, and falling away again. The descending drips of suspensions from the five voices of the anonymous Sicut lilium were shiveringly lovely. Thomas Tomkins’ O praise the Lord is a rare treat: unusually for a Reformation English work, it’s busy, and the text is largely swallowed in the complex interweaving of the twelve voices for which it is set. Stile Antico absolutely relished this performance, firing each phrase off with exactitude, and accentuating the crash and sway of its sectional writing. Victoria’s well-known O magnum mysterium was taken at a slower pace than one often hears it, but this allowed for some exquisite subtleties: the fractional pause before the full ‘O magnum’ entry; the quiet intensity of ‘O beata Virgo’; the lilting phrasing of the final ‘Alleluia’. Sheppard’s Gaude, gaude, gaude Maria, the longest piece of the evening, was slow, intense and layered, providing glorious contrasts between the plainsong sections and the various combinations of voice parts in the polyphonic material, wherein the occasional piquant tang of a false relation made itself felt.

The two contemporary pieces were extremely attractive, and provided just the right amount foil for the Renaissance material. Watkins’ The Phoenix and the Turtle zipped along with drive, the ostinati in the middle parts for much of it sitting nicely against the pedal notes in the ‘Threnos’ section. The prose text of Frances-Hoad’s A Gift of Heaven lends itself to a solo voice, and tenor Jonathan Hanley delivered its slightly angular lines with just the right fluidity over a quiet chordal background. Contrapuntal, full-choir phrases were used to highlight portions of the letter, as though light had suddenly fallen upon the parchment. The interjection of a Latin section of the ‘Gloria’ – in a Palestrina-esque quotation – was clever and effective, and the decorated choral passage of Palestrina’s sign-off elegantly portrayed the flourish of the composer’s signature.

Here’s to another 20 years!

Read the full review here.