'Passion and Precision' - 7.04.03

[Review: St John’s, Smith Square, London] John Allison: 3 April 2003, The Times

There is no other ensemble I’d rather hear in Mozart and Haydn than the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and these two composers dominated this programme. But even if the band’s sound was less remarkable than it is, even if it didn’t have that trademark warmth of a bigger orchestra and the focus of a smaller group, this concert would still have been extraordinary. Indeed, it was put together with special care, as the finale to an unusual London series by the COE.

The five concerts of its Passions & Diversions series have represented a departure from the COE’s long-standing partnerships with such conductors as Claudio Abbado and Nikolaus Harnoncourt. The “mix’n’match” programmes have come from within, as it were, with many of the performances being directed by players themselves. Breaking the mould of traditional concert-giving is always worth a try, and if the speaker imported for the first concert spoilt some good intentions with a string of pious platitudes, here the programme proved again that music exists partly to say things words cannot. Even the greatest sceptics would have been won over, if just for the evening, by the power of this Passiontide programme, in which the COE was joined by the recently formed chamber choir Tenebrae.

This first collaboration revealed an ideal match between orchestra and choir: handpicked by Tenebrae’s artistic director, the former King’s Singer Nigel Short, the choristers sing with full-throated urgency, and there is not a born-again choirboy among them. “Passion and Precision” is the choir’s motto, and here, for once, is an organisation that lives up to its motto. In the Mozart Requiem, which ended the evening, Short could perhaps have done with more precision in his dealings with the orchestra, but the choir delivered crack counterpoint, and its sense of drama showed how this work points towards Romanticism.

There was, of course, no orchestra in Allegri’s Miserere, the celebrated piece which the young Mozart heard on his visit to the Sistine Chapel. This performance had both stillness and flow, while Mozart’s Ave Verum took on sombre beauty. Yet Haydn provided the highlights. His motet Insanae et vanae curae opened the concert in a blaze of intensity, yet had elegance too. And his Symphony No. 44, Trauer, directed from the harpsichord by Richard Egarr, had deep pathos and refinement thanks to the COE’s thrilling unanimity.