Bach at Christmas, Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras/John Eliot Gardiner, Barbican, review: ‘Only one soloist commanded the space’

‘John Eliot Gardiner habitually delivers transcendent evenings, but this end of tour wasn’t one of them’

The Monteverdi Choir

Away from the grand Christmas warhorses, John Eliot Gardiner was serving up more scholarly fare at the Barbican, consisting of Bach’s Christmas offerings in Leipzig where he worked for some 27 years.

It comprised a Lutheran Mass (a cut-down version of the mass containing only Kyrie and Gloria) BWV 233, later reworked into the B minor Mass; a cantata, Süßer Trost, intimate in scale with an exceptionally lovely flute solo, and ending with the large-scale E-flat Magnificat with Christmas interpolations.

It may be pedagogically admirable, indeed even a new twist on authenticity, but using only soloists drawn from the choir is not without drawbacks. In both mass and cantata, the soprano felt too small and as yet too unseasoned to project adequately in a hall the size of the Barbican. In fact, only one soloist really commanded the space.

The more energised Magnificat was the most successful in performance, especially with Reginald Mobley’s counter-tenor, confidently fleet of foot in his runs, occasionally imparting a surprisingly plausible jazz inflection.

The beauty of line was practised, the playing of the English Baroque Soloists strong, but I found myself missing the tremendous freshness of Maasaki Suzuki and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. John Eliot Gardiner habitually delivers transcendent evenings – but this end of tour wasn’t one of them.