Forum Theatre, Malvern – 12th April 2024
Reviewed by Courie Amado Juneau
4****
Mozart’s Great Mass in C minor stands in the shadow of its more famous sibling, the Requiem. This work doesn’t perhaps get the recognition and adulation it deserves but tonight, in Malvern, we got to experience its majesty and power in person. Mozart wrote it in gratitude for his wife recovering from illness and to me it has a rather romantic tinge to it – or perhaps a more earthly heartfelt air than many an austere and sober church setting might elicit.
Soprano Hannah Fraser-Mackenzie, gave us our first hairs up on the back of the neck moment with a truly heavenly, soaring Christe Eleison. The other soprano soloist, Sam Cobb, was equally impressive. But honestly, as the works progressed, all the soloists were sublime, each and every one of them with the most mellifluous and sonorous of voices.
The second half gave us Bach’s Magnificat in D. As one would expect with Bach there’s a logic to the piece with some lovely symmetry between the sections – building up the tension towards the louder movements, only to release it and repeat this structure again. His employment of more sparse instrumentation and soloists to portray personal suffering and larger forces for such movements as He Shows Strength also displayed what a genius composer he was. This all results in an impressive operatic effect that’s all the more powerful than if the full forces were deployed throughout.
The Mozart was superb, the Bach superber (I know, but I was feeling jocular so it seemed an apt word). Generally speaking I’m not the biggest fan of Johann Sebastian’s music – almost certainly due to having been tortured by one of his lute transcriptions for my Grade 8 Classical Guitar exam many moons past. But this piece has turned my head; it’s dramatic yet light and frothy, unified yet varied, grand yet intimate.
The orchestra was on fine form as always and truly magnificent sounding – especially the enlarged brass, timpani and increased strings. But, for all that, I was tickled pink by the sections featuring just the continuo and singer(s) as you could really hear the fabulous organ playing and, especially, when the oboe and 2 flutes played on their own – what a beautiful combination and playing!
Sonically the evening was a triumph. As before, however, I feel like the text as presented in the programme could be much clearer. The Great Mass text was especially bad – it was for the most part just a massive wall of words which made following it (for those of us who don’t speak Latin) in the dimly lit auditorium a real challenge. The addition of some judicious use of spaces in the text for the Gloria and Credo would have solved this problem. For some this won’t be a big thing but I like to understand how the music is supporting the words (and vice versa).
The Armonico Consort under the expert hand (no baton) of Christopher Monks gave us another evening of sparkling entertainment and I cannot wait for their return in June with The Fairy Queen. World class entertainment once again.