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22 December 2011
MESSIAHS come in all shapes and sizes. And before a bolt of lightning is angled in my direction, let me make it clear that I am referring to Handel’s famous oratorio. There are fat ones and skinny ones, slick ones and pedantic ones, polished professional ones and well-meaning amateur ones. But for me, the approach taken by the Dunedin Consort and Players on Tuesday – the same compact forces that Handel favoured in his later years – would be the chosen one.
Ken Walton. Scotsman. 22nd December 2011.
Full Review
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29 September 2011
SCOTSMAN, 29th September 2011
By Kelly Apter
http://news.scotsman.com/arts/Classical-review-Dunedin-Consort-and.6843662.jp
BEFORE this closing concert of the Lammermuir Festival, the organisers proudly announced that this year's event has been a resounding success, and that they will be doing it all over again next year. That a new festival can flourish in such times of economic austerity is nothing short of remarkable, but the "smiles on people's faces as they left the concerts" have apparently convinced Hugh Macdonald and James Waters that Lammermuir has a place in the busy festival market.
Those smiles continued on Sunday night, when the Dunedin Consort and Players delivered a sumptuous programme of Bach and Handel. Dunedin closed last year's Lammermuir Festival, and although that's only two years in a row, it already feels like a comfortable tradition.
Director John Butt is a man whose exuberance knows no bounds; with one hand on the organ or harpsichord, the other expressively pulls the very best out of these consummate singers and players. Particular praise goes to the passionate playing of Dutch violinist Cecilia Bernardini (especially during Bach's Double Violin Concerto in D minor) and the pure and engaging voices of Edinburgh-born soprano Susan Hamilton and Austrian alto Margot Oitzinger.
But essentially this was a group effort, and the "smiles" Macdonald and Waters spoke of came most readily when the musicians and singers united in Handel's fiendishly difficult Dixit Dominus. A work which gave solo vocalists a chance to shine, and made beautiful use of St Mary's resonant acoustics as ten perfectly matched voices came together in glorious harmony.
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11 May 2011
ST MARY'S METROPOLITAN CATHEDRAL, EDINBURGH
CONRAD WILSON
MESSIAH and the Matthew Passion remain the annual staples of the Dunedin Consort's repertoire. But Bach means more than the Matthew, just as Handel means more than Messiah, and Edinburgh's inspired little chorus is touring Scotland this week with a fascinating programme of other things.
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19 April 2011
Bach, St Matthew Passion: Dunedin Consort, John Butt (director and organ), St Mary’s Metropolitan Cathedral, Edinburgh, 14.04.2011 (SRT)
Simon Thomson. Seen & Heard International
Bach’s Matthew Passion is now widely recognised as one of the cornerstones of western civilization (can anyone really think that I exaggerate?) and, as with any work of such cultural significance, its history of performance has become almost as important as the work itself. In recent years the Dunedin Consort have been one of the key drivers in reassessing “period” performances of Bach. Their (mostly) one-to-a-part style has moved from being on the fringes of accepted performance practice to being right at its centre: just look at the enthusiastic reviews of their recordings of Messiah and the B Minor Mass to see what I mean.
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19 April 2011
Ian Stuart-Hunter
Perthsire Advertiser
FRIDAY’S concert in Perth Concert Hall carried on the fine tradition of inviting stupendous singers to give magnificent concerts.
On this occasion it was the Dunedin Consort and Players under their director John Butt in a performance of JS Bach’s Matthew Passion.
To start before the music, praise must be due to the splendid programme book available from Horsecross. Praise is also due to Horsecross for, having given the audience the complete text, then, though maintaining focus on the platform, they kept the auditorium lights at a level so that you could actually read it.
John Butt’s layout of the stage was instructive. In believing that dialogue is a most important facet of the work, the two, one-to-a-part choirs were on either side, each with its own orchestra. The two portable organs were in the centre, one of which John Butt himself played to accompany recitatives. Thus, in the opening chorus most came from the soloists-as-choir on the left with the interjected questions thrown in from the choir on the right. The impact of the drama was present in all the singing, not just when they were the bloodthirsty crowd.
Playing on original instruments the line up of these two orchestras was cast from strength, having Pavlo Besnoziuk as Leader of the first orchestra. His performance of the solo in a siciliano-inspired version of Erbarme dich was exceptional as was the viola da gamba solo, played by Emilia Benjamin, in Komm, süßes Kreuz.
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18 April 2011
JS Bach could churn out masterworks with mind-boggling efficiency, but he took his time over the St Matthew Passion, holding back its premiere and rejigging several versions of the score before he died. Compared with his earlier St John Passion, the Matthew has similar dramatic narrative (and lots of the same tunes), but beyond that is a different beast. It's longer, more intricate and less immediate; its drama unfolds over three-and-a-half hours of astoundingly varied forms – seething choruses, soaring arias, melodramatic recitatives – that can drag out for ever if done clumsily.
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10 March 2011
MOFFAT MUSIC SOCIETY
The Dunedin Consort’s programme for their concert last Friday was entitled The Colour of Song. It was a most appropriate title, for the six singers’ voices seemed to have an almost unlimited range of colour as they took us on a tour ranging from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. The sextet’s a capella singing (two sopranos, an alto, a tenor, a baritone and a bass) was always perfectly tuned, and introduced us to a world of words and music one seldom has the opportunity to hear in live performance.
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24 December 2010
Despite a sadistically unheated church and an audience huddled stoically in scarves and overcoats, this was, as ever, the most operatically direct of Messiahs, its drama stripped to the bone by the Dunedin Consort’s tiny handful of voices and instrumentalists, conducted with unfaltering vigour by the renowned baroque specialist John Butt.
Only a performance of this quality could keep us glued – though frozen was maybe the mot juste – to our seats for so long.
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07 August 2010
Andrew McGregor on BBC radio 3 this morning talked about our latest recording of Bach's B Minor Mass. Hear excerpts from the Gloria from 2.31 minutes in.
Listen now (Available until Saturday the 14th August)
(BBC iPlayer is only available for UK Residents)
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02 August 2010
Every now and then there is a concert that just blows me away, leaving me bereft of all my critical faculties. One such was the Bach B minor Mass given at St John's, Smith Square by the Dunedin Consort and Players, conducted by John Butt (17 May). Although I know and admire their previous CDs, this was the first time that I heard the Dunedin Consort live. They used the 2006 Joshua Rifkin edition, with 5 solo singers (Susan Hamilton, Cecilia Osmond, Margot Oitzinger, Thomas Hobbs and Matthew Brook) and 5 ripienists. One of the keys to the success of this performance was the total commitment of the performers and the conductor, with his energetic and focussed direction and his evident personal engagement with the music. His pacing and control of the power of the performers was excellent - his direction of the Crucifixus was exemplary.
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