Consecration | Adelaide Festival 2022 review

Early Music buffs were out in force for a program centred on 17th century Venetians, Claudio Monteverdi and Barbara Strozzi.

Erin Helyard, artistic director of Pinchgut Opera with his harpsichord. Picture: John Appleyard

Chamber Landscapes: Consecration

Classical Music – Australia

ADELAIDE FESTIVAL
UKARIA Cultural Centre

March 11

Early Music buffs were out in force for Consecration, the opening salvo in this year’s Resonance: Chamber Landscapes series at UKARIA.

Directed by early music firebrand Erin Helyard, it centred on the music of two 17th century Venetians, the great visionary Claudio Monteverdi and Barbara Strozzi, one of the first women to publish in her own name.

Monteverdi was represented mainly in selections from his masterly 1641 collection Selva morale e spirituale.

Adelaide Festival 2022. Chamber Landscapes: Consecration by Pinchgut Opera.

Many of the pieces are both startlingly – indeed, daringly – original and virtuosic, with elaborate word painting and requiring real baroque authenticity to plumb their devotional depths.

With five singers from Pinchgut Opera in finest form, we were in the very best of hands.

Strozzi’s music is no less remarkable, not only with its sophistication and complexity, but in creating a deep relationship between words and music on an emotional level.

The explosive utterances at the word “volcano”, the military marching at the mention of war, the repeated, urgent upward steps at “altissimis”, and the repeating of important passages for dramatic effect, all go to make for music of unique presence.

Helyard (harpsichord and organ), along with Hannah Lane (baroque harp) and Anton Baba (gamba), provided the instrumental underpinning, with Lane also performing two anonymous toccatas from the famous “Chigi” manuscript and Helyard a piece that showed off the meantone tuning (“a bit like spice … like white pepper”).

A really fine concert by accomplished artists at the top of their game.