Who says that concept albums only belong to pop music? At this year’s Musikfest Berlin, Collegium Vocale Gent presented a programme comprising twenty short pieces by five late Renaissance/early Baroque composers, including Marenzio, Monteverdi and Salomone Rossi. Alternating instrumental intermezzos with madrigals, motets and canzonette, conductor Philippe Herreweghe traced a narrative centred on the utopian land of Arcadia, and the memento mori that is intrinsically attached to it (Et in Arcadia ego). Each of the four parts of the concert – Separation, Intimacy, Death and The Lovers Reunited – made up a chapter of the story, not unlike, say, Pink Floyd’s The Wall if Roger Waters played the cornetto.
With six singers (two sopranos, two tenors, one alto and one bass) and seven musicians on stage, the ensemble was acoustically rich and balanced. Sophie Gent’s violin and Lambert Colson’s cornetto struck up a solid relationship from the very start, responding fluently to each other’s prompts. At the same time, the basso continuo – courtesy of Ageet Zweistra’s cello, Jonas Nordberg’s theorbo and Maude Gratton’s harpsichord – provided a flourishing harmonic and rhythmic ground throughout the evening. Because of the Collegium’s tried-and-tested synergy, Herreweghe sat back and let the musicians play during the instrumental breaks, reserving his guidance to the moments of vocal polyphony.
Within the overall soft-spoken quality of the concert, the ensemble still managed to differentiate the tones of each chapter with characteristic inflections. The highlight of the first section, Monteverdi’s Ah dolente partita, embodied all that the Collegium excels for: cohesion, harmonic sensibility and interpretative depth. Miriam Allan’s soprano, incredibly delicate and easy in the high register, and Jimmy Holliday’s bass, of a fine and smooth grain, delimited the score. Between these extremes, the other soloists completed the picture, showcasing the harmonic charm of the piece.
The second part of the programme set a more placid pace, following the ‘intimacy’ of its title. Four instrumental pieces by Rossi further acquainted the audience with the musicians, especially the wind duo of cornetto and trombone, gracefully played by Bart Vroomen. In Sigismondo d’India’s Dialogo della Rosa, Benedict Hymas and Nicholas Mulroy personified two distinct types of Baroque tenor: the former agile and impalpable, the latter firm and extrovert. It was, however, the lulling beauty of Monteverdi’s Dolcemente dormiva and Marenzio’s melancholic Al lume delle stelle which most complemented the qualities of all the soloists.
To those who are not too familiar with madrigal jargon, the third theme of the night might sound misleading. In fact, the ‘death’ that riddles so much of the repertoire is often a peculiar one, to be interpreted as the petite mort of lovers, rather than anything bleak or gruesome. The concept of the entire concert – the Arcadian memento mori – thus takes an unexpected twist, reminding us of a quite different fact of life. In Tirsi mio, caro Tirsi and Nel dolce seno, the Collegium explored the more sensual side of Rossi and Marenzio’s compositions, spotlighting their sinuous melodies and the lingering abandon of their harmonies. Even in the ‘deconstructed’ instrumental arrangement of Tirsi morir volea, much of the tension of the original by Marenzio was preserved in the oscillation of the melodies and the interplay of imitations.