EIF: Dunedin Consort

Queen’s Hall - 16/08/22 

Extremities of Experience 

Browsing today’s programme, I began to wonder if I had stumbled upon a very early version of ‘West Side Story’. On many pages there was mention of Maria, in warm and almost erotic verses, and I almost expected “the most beautiful sound I ever heard!” The Maria today, however, was not a Puerto Rican immigrant but the Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven, to whom many composers wrote hymns, with verses competing with each other to be more and more florid and worshipful in tone. 

There were some beautiful sounds in this recital, given by the Dunedin Consort with Nicholas Mulroy (tenor), but too many were too similar, and I was left somewhat underwhelmed by the whole. A mixture of instrumental pieces and tenor songs, all from the 17th century, I didn’t feel that the recital had a strong enough structure, despite the best efforts of the excellent performers. Two violins, a viola da gamba, a theorbo and John Butt on harpsichord and chamber organ, this was a minimalist Dunedin show, which entertained but didn’t thrill a very well-attended Queen’s Hall; it was rather summed up at the end by the fact that two of the players who didn’t play in the last piece didn’t reappear for a bow. 

Recently appointed Associate Director of the Dunedin Consort, Nicholas Mulroy’ s programme notes suggested that the turn of the 16th century into the 17th revealed a society and an art at the cusp, between Renaissance purity and Baroque extremism. Shakespeare, Caravaggio, Cervantes and Monteverdi are invoked, as artists bringing humanity, with all its flaws, into art, and all the emotional music of this concert was meant to shine a light on this change. I have no problems with the ideas expressed, and indeed fully support this notion of an epoch-defining burst of artistic creativity.  

I suppose my problem was with the performance, which, as I said, was excellent in essence. I am a huge fan of Nicholas Mulroy’ s Evangelist in the Bach Passions, and in fact I recorded some of the arias and all the choruses with him in the Dunedin’s enormously successful recording of the St Matthew Passion for Linn. In the way that not all voices are suited to all repertoires, it seems to me that Nicholas’s voice is intrinsically non-Italian, and so, much of this concert with its florid, highly idiomatic tenor writing, in Latin and Italian for the most part, failed to reach me. It’s a great voice, smooth and easy through the registers, highly intelligent in interpretation, but lacking that visceral edge that is needed for Italian music, even of the Baroque period. I am always on at my students to remember that Baroque Italians were the same as their contemporary, highly emotional, compatriots, be they tenors, chefs or Strictly judges.  

There were many lovely things in this concert – Buxtehude’s Trio Sonata, with thrilling playing from Huw Daniel and Kinga Ujszászi on violin, and a gentle opening piece for solo theorbo, played by Elizabeth Kenny, and I felt Mr Mulroy relaxed into the piece he knew best, ‘Nigra sum’, from Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers. As ever, John Butt was a controlling force from keyboard, and indeed he played a solo harpsichord piece convincingly, but I felt his influence was not as strong as usual with the Dunedins, perhaps resulting in my caveats about the whole concert. Perhaps having the Director and the Associate Director of the Consort playing in the same concert muddied the waters slightly. 

Cover photo: Ryan Buchanan