In Performance: Apollo Tribute; Gala Benefit for WEMF

In today's Washington Post: Kennedy Center's "Salute to Apollo," by Joan Reinthaler.

Web-only review:

DC's Early-Music Groups Join to Pass the Hat
by Charles T. Downey

The Washington Early Music Festival is doing its best to endure uncertain financial times. To raise money for the 2010 festival (which will focus on France), seven groups and one soloist donated their talents for a gala benefit concert Saturday night at St. Mark's Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill, a hodgepodge that was entertaining, often lovely but overall unspectacular.
(read more after the jump)

Among the vocal selections, the Countertop Consort gave the most consistently beautiful performance, with eight voices evenly balanced in a section of Tallis's "Lamentations." The Hebrew letters before each verse, likely because of their exotic inscrutability, inspired the composer to create some of his most mysterious and imaginative music -- rendered here as luscious vocalises, unfurled like the whorls of a manuscript's elegantly illuminated capital letters. In arrangements of Hildegard von Bingen's chants with harpist Constance Whiteside, Marjorie Bunday and Allison Mondel blended their voices in a spellbinding performance of textural simplicity and rhythmic freedom. In a rare Gombert motet, "Lugebat David Absalon," the Suspicious Cheese Lords gave crisp definition, if not always pure intonation, to the laments of King David, like "Heu me" or "Ut moriar," volleyed back and forth among the eight parts.

Instrumental rarities were not as well served, although violinist Elizabeth Field and harpsichordist Steven Silverman played nimbly at high speed in the corrente of a Vivaldi sonata, and Modern Musick allowed composer anniversary buffs to check Giuseppe Torelli, who died in 1709, off their list with three charming miniatures for violin and cello. Unfortunately, the evening was prolonged by a rambling narration, ostensibly to cover the change of performers but ultimately unnecessary.

-- Charles T. Downey

By Anne Midgette  |  July 20, 2009; 6:30 AM ET  | Category:  festivals , local reviews
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