Sometimes the nomenclature of Oxford's ever-proliferating musical groups seems as weird as pop and boy bands. Though of course much posher. Here we have The Oxford Spezzati Soloists and Orchestra offering a concert of baroque work in Merton Chapel. Their name is, in fact, historically correct, the cori spezzati being divided choirs singing from separate locations or against solo voices or a continuo, especially in grand and faintly gimmicky settings like St Mark's; Tallis's 40-part motet, and Handel's double choruses keep up the device through the 18th century.
So we have our 21st-century spezzati, choir, soloists, continuo, orchestra (mainly strings, with oboe and organ), under their founder Nicholas Mumby, all very young, all very actively involved in musical life.
Bach's Cantata No.170, composed at Leipzig about 1725, sets a text by a contemporary poet (one Lehms), for strings, oboe, organ and solo. The contralto Claire Eadington was unwisely placed behind the orchestra and struggled in the larger arias, though in the second - a lament for lost souls - the gentler delicately sketched orchestral part allowed her skill in handling difficult melismas to be fully heard.
A Trumpet Concerto by Neruda - no, not the Chilean Nobel Prize-winner but Johann Baptist, violinist and composer at the Dresden Court, very little-known (he makes it into Grove but not into my Oxford Companion). The concerto, a lively piece, deserved revival, though this time the soloist, Rhydian Griffiths, was forward of the orchestra who were no match for his rousing cadenzas in the first and third movements. The flowing melodic second movement, with long-breathed phrases for the trumpet, was a delight.
Finally, Handel's Dixit Dominus (Psalm 110) of 1707. This was what Sir Thomas Allen calls A Big Sing. The Old Testament text does recall Private Eye's parody of its smiting', but the music is constantly inventive, using solo and full chorus, fugue, counterpoint, varied dynamics and word-painting, as in the stress on Dominus' and (more Private Eye!) in the staccato head-banging of conquassabit capita, all culminating in a magnificent Doxology. This was a genuine coro spezzato, and very good too.
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