Academy of Ancient Music, Milton Court, London, review: Brilliantly kaleidoscopic

The conductor Richard Egarr and members of the Academy of Ancient Music performed the music of Monteverdi – but it was the sopranos Carolyn Sampson and Rowan Pierce who stole the show

Richard Egarr, the musical director of the Academy of Ancient Music, also played harpsichord and organ

“Head-banging, bonkers” was how Richard Egarr described the music with which he and his colleagues from the Academy of Ancient Music were going to intersperse their programme of motets and psalm-settings by Monteverdi. About the composer in question – Dario Castello – absolutely nothing is known beyond his name, plus the fact that he took minor orders to free himself from the laws that bound ordinary people in 17th-century Venice. As we soon found out, his sonatas were commensurately anarchic, shifting violently in tempo and mood, and breaking all the then-reigning rules of harmony.

But combos which delivered them here varied from harpsichord or organ (Egarr) plus theorbo lute (Paula Chateauneuf) to three strings plus two gamey old instruments – the wood-and-leather cornetto (Josue Melendez Pelaez) and the dulcian, a proto-bassoon played with great virtuosity by Benny Aghassi – and the effect was brilliantly kaleidoscopic.

But this superb evening belonged to two sopranos – Carolyn Sampson and Rowan Pierce – whose duets and solos reflected Monteverdi at his most gravely serene. Pierce, being younger, may not yet possess Sampson’s super-refined control of phrasing and dynamics, but their voices made a lovely meld. Monteverdi’s music maintained a graceful equality between them, letting them interlace, echo each other, and at climactic moments soar off solo into the empyrean.