Bet you didn’t know it was the tercentenary of Pergolesi’s birth this year! His dates are usually given as 1710-36, but the first of this is the registration of his birth in early January, rather than the birth itself, so it’s likely he was born in 1709.
The Chandos Singers celebrated by performing his Vespers, incorporating a couple of motets, Beatus Vir and Lauda Jerusalem by Vivaldi. There was a definite distinction in style between the two, though I’d find it hard to define. The Pergolesi seemed to anticipate that galant style, with a lot of simple, short phrases; I found the double-choir (or choir+group of soloists) sections the most interesting.
This made for a long first half – about 1½ hours – and in the second part we turned to another anniversary, that of the Avignon papacy, inaugurated in a Mass in March 1309 whose music we reconstructed. It is rather easy to dismiss music of this era as trivial to perform because for example it does not have a huge range. But it can make unusual demands in areas such as rhythm, no less so than a lot of 20th/21st century repertoire.