{"id":6600,"date":"2024-02-25T23:34:34","date_gmt":"2024-02-25T23:34:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/?p=6600"},"modified":"2024-03-15T23:38:27","modified_gmt":"2024-03-15T23:38:27","slug":"tenebrae-finally-make-it-to-bath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/2024\/02\/25\/tenebrae-finally-make-it-to-bath\/","title":{"rendered":"Tenebrae finally make it to Bath"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of years ago Tenebrae’s Bath début was thwarted by a storm<\/a> which made it unsafe to travel. They returned for this year’s Bath Bachfest, to give a concert in St Mary’s Bathwick. I bought the last ticket in the nave for what appeared to be a sell-out, with a musically knowledgeable audience around me.<\/p>\n

The first half was one of Gesualdo’s settings of the eponymous Tenebrae service, the one for Holy Saturday. All of this was unfamiliar to me and I did my best to navigate the unfamiliar chord progressions and modulations. Sometimes I felt the composer was trying out the same ones repeatedly to experiment and find out which one worked best. The setting of O vos omnes<\/i> for example, has much in common in this respect with the more famous setting which I know.<\/p>\n

After the interval came Bach motets. After Komm, Jesu, komm<\/i> came Jesu, meine Freude<\/i> which was perhaps the weak link in these performances. The same ten singers sang throughout the evening, but with a five-part choir the two soprano lines didn’t quite match the volume of the lower voices. But the high point was the sparkling Singet dem Herrn<\/i> which ended the concert. Here the rather rigid approach to tempi favoured by Nigel Short kept the motet motoring along briskly.<\/p>\n

I was glad to have made it to this concert but I’m not a totally unqualified fan of Tenebrae. Despite their immaculate tuning and blend, I find there is something a little relentless and hard-edged about their performances. Difficult to put my finger on the source of this – maybe it is the inflexibility of tempi (apart from at the ends of phrases) or a sense that the blend is achieved because some of the singers are having to suppress natural warmth in their voices?<\/p>\n

The coach was once again disgorging its passengers outside the church for this concert, and I’ve now found out where<\/a> they come from. Maybe this is something other festivals, not least the Bath International Festival, could learn from; get on the radar of an organisation which organises cultural tours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of years ago Tenebrae’s Bath début was thwarted by a storm which made it unsafe to travel. They returned for this year’s Bath Bachfest, to give a concert in St Mary’s Bathwick. I bought the last ticket in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[53,1019,176,1572,131,1479],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6600"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6600"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6618,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6600\/revisions\/6618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}