Early-music pilgrims show their devotion at festival
Early-music nation has taken to the streets.
Like Wagnerians at the shrine of Bayreuth or diehard Sox fans at Fenway, the early-music pilgrims flooding the city for the Boston Early Music Festival are a passionately devoted group. They queued outside of Emmanuel Church on Thursday afternoon to hear the Orlando Consort, a distinguished British vocal quartet, as part of a marathon week of concerts. Some concertgoers were happily branded with festival shirts and bags. Many clutched the thick program book and wore backpacks suggesting a long day of urban concert-hopping.
Within the broader classical music world, early-music fans remain a distinct subculture, even as the historically informed performance styles the movement has championed have become increasingly part of the mainstream. And as with any subculture, special rules seem to apply. At most classical concerts, for instance, obscure choices in repertoire are often punished at the box office. But in the early-music world, when the performers are well-known, listeners seem to thrill to the prospect of terra incognita.
I wondered for instance how many of the fans that packed into Emmanuel Church had heard more than one or two works on the Orlando Consort's program. But it appeared not to matter, especially with the group's clever unifying theme of garden music -- that is, representations of gardens in medieval and Renaissance works drawn from France, Italy, England, Burgundy, Spain, and the Low Countries over a period of three centuries, from Guillaume de Machaut to Clemens non Papa . Many selections used horticulture as metaphor -- for politics, or more commonly, of course, for love. The quartet's performances were intelligent, graceful, and fluid, with each grouping of songs introduced from the stage with that unmistakably British combination of eloquence and dry wit.
The concert ended just in time for early-music fans to wolf down some dinner and make it to Jordan Hall for an 8 p.m. performance of music by John Eccles and Rameau by the BEMF Orchestra and Chorus. The first half featured Eccles's "Judgment of Paris," a work written as part of a competition held in 1701 for which four composers set the same libretto to music. (Pick a latter-day reference: "American Idol" or "Die Meistersinger .") Eccles actually placed second but, we are told, he deserved to win. That's easy to believe given this colorful and distinctive score. The libretto by William Congreve is itself the story of a competition wherein Paris (sung by Aaron Sheehan) is instructed by Mercury (Colin Balzer) to crown the most beautiful goddess. Venus (Ellen Hargis), Pallas (Amanda Forsythe), and Juno (Pamela Dellal) vied for the title. The fine cast of singers had fun with their roles, with the women preening for Paris and exchanging icy stares among themselves.
After intermission it was the orchestra's turn in the spotlight, with a suite of selections from various Rameau operas. The ensemble itself is an elite group of early-music specialists, both established and emerging players, drawn together for this biennial festival from all corners of the map. It is nonetheless impressive how quickly the orchestra's sound has coalesced into a tight and buoyant whole, even without a conductor. Robert Mealy, the group's dynamic concertmaster, leads from the violin section, and the playing in the Rameau suite was light on its feet, rhythmically incisive, and vividly characterized. The famous storm scene from "Hippolyte et Aricie," full of furious string-crossings, was a particular highlight. (Recently the group has been expanding its purview through re- cordings; Lully's "Thésée" is just out.)
The concert finished at around 10 p.m. but the BEMF crowd was eager for more, and many returned to Jordan Hall one hour later to hear a delightful late-night recital by soprano Carolyn Sampson and lutenist Elizabeth Kenny. The atmosphere was more informal, especially after Kenny confessed from the stage that she had left some of her sheet music in a taxi. The duo persevered and was joined at one point by Paul O'Dette on theorbo and Stephen Stubbs on Baroque guitar. Kenny and Sampson, who is also singing the title role in Lully's "Psyché" this week, chose a program of songs performed by women in Baroque England, mostly by Purcell. Sampson's voice was a marvel of crystalline purity and melting sweetness, with a superb technique that allowed her to float the quietest notes out into the hall like small pearls of light.
She was sensitively partnered by Kenny and the brief program was an ideal way to cap the evening, and the BEMF audience poured onto Gainsborough Street just after midnight. The next day's organ marathon would start at 9 a.m., and you could bet that plenty of these concertgoers would be there.
