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Matt Bright December 10, 2007

Just because something is traditional doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be conservative. Oxford Spezzati’s seasonal offering of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio could well have been suffering from a confusion of these two concepts. It would certainly explain the slightly underwhelming nature of the performance. This was particularly noticeable in the second of the three parts, when triumphant chorus Ehre sei Gott in der Höhe was somehow made rather dull and soupy.

The dispassionate mood was visible on the faces of the chorus throughout – while some of the showboating and gurning that can go on in choral concerts may be a little irritating it would perhaps have been preferable to the lack of animation, both physical and vocal, that was on display here.

This is not to say that there was no pleasure to be had here. Robin Whitehouse’s clear, controlled tenor voice not only made him an excellent Evangelist, but shone out in his two arias – the first of which, the heavily ornamented Fröhe Hirten, eilt, ach, eilt provided the opportunity for some extraordinary virtuosity. Counter-tenor Henry Capper-Allen stood out also. In a register where subtlety and dynamic control can often be discarded in favour of showboating falsetto, his sensitivity was highly impressive.

Unfortunately, these were the best of a variable bunch. While Bass Jon Stainsby and Soprano Rachael Parsons fell in with the general mood and gave competent but unremarkable performances, the remaining two soloists were weak. A breathless Katie Lee was almost defeated by her admittedly somewhat strident wind accompaniment (one of the Cor Anglais in particular needed to calm down a bit throughout), while second Bass soloist Adam Smyth sounded reedy and almost offhand.

With the exception of the aforementioned excitable Cor Anglais and some passionate trumpet-work in the final chorale, the orchestral accompaniment was for the most part as workmanlike as the chorus. They seemed to hurry rather brusquely past many of the chorales, and then rather perversely plod through the arias and recitatives – the lyrically impassioned So geht! Genug… was given a strict, airless treatment that drained away all of its potential drama.

It’s a shame that the reverence with which Bach is often viewed can encourage this sort of reverent, cautious approach. It takes a few risks to really bring out his genius – risks that this ensemble, sadly, didn’t seem willing to take.

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Joseph Kennedy December 10, 2007

The Christmas Oratorio is not so much an oratorio as a bumper, omnibus edition of six cantatas composed for performance at the main Christmas services during J. S. Bach’s time as cantor at Leipzig. Choosing to call it an ‘oratorio’, rather than a cycle announces, said the composer, the status of the whole work as one part of a musical ‘sacred history’ incorporating both the text of the gospels and the chorales that were the principal musical element of Lutheran church music.

The music conducted by the Spezzati’s co-founder Nicholas Mumby mostly slipped along, but the brass in the openings of both parts one and six dominated in a way that typifies arrangements of Bach and baroque music generally, but in St Mary’s led to the chorus being not so much merely overwhelmed as entirely disregarded. There is always great joy however, to be found in blasting trumpets, and no part of the ensemble dominated or overwhelmed at any other part of the performance, with the impressive physicality of Alistair Thomas’s later bassoon solo deserving to be singled out for special praise.

Of the vocal soloists, almost every one started falteringly but later got into some kind of stride. Jon Stainsby should be seen a definite exception to this, however; his rendition of the aria ‘Großer Herr, o starker König’ was pitch-, tone-, and phrase-perfect. For a piece that was composed as the text of divine service, getting across the words, many of them taken directly from the gospels, is imperative and Stainsby excelled in this. Rachel Parsons, performing the soprano part of the angel in part one, and a recitative and aria after the interval unfortunately did not, although the sweetness of her voice was coupled with an otherworldly quality befitting her role as the heavenly host. Tenor Robin Whitehouse’s contributions as the Evangelist tended towards the abrupt and were at times soupy, but in his performance of part six’s ‘Nun mögt ihr stolzen Feinde schrecken’ and its preceding recitative he proved the worth of his growing reputation.

The structure of the programme, which saw the first two parts/cantatas performed before a chaotic interval followed by the final, sixth, part of the Oratorio, led to the evening feeling disjointed and peaking early. Coupled with a top ticket price of £20, despite some laudable performances it would be fair to say that people may have other things to do with their time and money in December. Either a straight-through performance or one that included an additional part of the Oratorio following the interval would have given a more balanced programme, and performing four parts would have gone towards justifying the ticket price. As it was, one feels the need to add the modifiers short and expensive to the well-deserved enjoyable when giving an honest assessment of the evening’s entertainment.

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