23/05/21 It was planned differently. Sir John Eliott Gardiner would have a spiritual program with his ensembles on the morning of Pentecost Sunday The Lord said should design. Traveling is not yet going the way it should be. No problem for the Whitsun Festival. When things get serious, Bartoli just goes through it. the Mrs. also!
By Reinhard Kriechbaum
It’s amazing what this singer is able to do under constant pressure. The abundance of arias on this “jump-in appointment” alone would suffice for many a colleague as a weekly workload. Cecilia Bartoli, however, digs her way day after day, evening after evening. A vocal ox tour? The voice shows nothing of the excessive energy pressure of this singer, seemed downright relaxed and flaky at this lunchtime.
Let’s not talk about a concert, let’s call it a performance. The program sequence according to the motto What passion cannot Music raise, Handel’s Caecilienode HV 76 borrowed, was heard here before. In the previous festival summer in the series Opera singing.
The review of this brilliant concert is one-to-one for this time too, we wouldn’t want to change a letter on it (only there were small changes in the encore block). And now we would like to write: a third and fourth time, please! So a foray through them Passion, the passions reflected in tones in music.
C
ecilia Bartoli is not only a singer whose habitus stands for all kinds of passion, she is also interested in historical performance practice. That is precisely why she is with the original sound ensemble The Musicians of Prince Monaco and its manager Gianluca Capuano meanwhile almost family-like. The extraordinary thing about this joint program: You can feel the baroque music rhetoric in the most beautiful community. The wonderful solo winds and bowing section leaders and the Bartoli develop together something like a sample book of phrases and phrases, the expressiveness of which was generally understood in the Baroque. In instrumental concerts the soloists are allowed to “sing” on their instruments, and in the Bartoli singing it becomes clear how and why the respective melodic vocabulary could and cannot be one way or another.
Cecilia Bartoli, with her stage presence, stands for that this is not a dry musical history lesson. More on this in our review from the previous summer festival. But we want to rave about how ingeniously this program is designed, closely interlinked between the vocal and instrumental contributions. Despite all of Bartoli’s personality strengths, the view of the outstanding quality of the Musicians of Prince Monacowho are currently undoubtedly at the top of the original sound ensembles.
And one more thing: The projections, pictorial baroque worlds with strong gestures, are wonderfully integrated. Unfortunately, the program does not tell who chose these pictures to go with the music. Nikolaus Harnoncourt once said as a justification for his decisive commitment to the original sound and the historical performance practice: He had always seen great pictures and frescoes, but only heard boring music. This morning with Cecilia Bartoli and the Musicians of Prince Monaco has shown once again that the music, properly understood and made to the point, can easily keep up with the painting of the era. Maybe it’s even more exciting.
Images: Salzburg Festival / Monika Rittershaus (1), Marco Borrelli (1)
To discuss the concert in the festival summer 2020
From Cecilia’s music and costume case
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