North American tour

Our 2023 season culminated with a sensational North American tour in October. The Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists performed J.S. Bach’s monumental Mass in B Minor and Handel’s pastoral ode L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato.

J.S. Bach: Mass in B minor BWV232

Bach put his Mass together at the end of his life, perhaps mindful of creating a lasting legacy, recycling pieces he had written in the previous decades and welding them together with new music, creating a compendium of all the different styles and approaches that he had taken during 30 or 40 years of music-making.

In his setting of the Latin text of the mass, Bach’s resolve was not merely to mime the gestures of belief, and to interpret doctrine via music of his own invention, but to extend the very range of music’s possibilities and through such exploration to make sense of the world in which he lived and whatever lay beyond it.

The Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists performed J. S. Bach’s Mass in B minor on their critically acclaimed European tour in April 2023. The Times described our, “Matchless, life-enhancing Bach,” in their ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review of our concert at St Martin-in-the-Fields in London, and Bachtrack noted our performance at Bozar in Brussels was, “The best concert of my life,” in their ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review.

Handel: L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato

Handel’s secular work L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato is one of his most inventive, varied and characteristically English works evoking contrasting emotions of the human condition, which creates a synergy of Enlightenment reason.

L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato (1740) is one of Handel’s most unusual works. Despite its Italian title, it uses a completely English text, much of it written a century earlier by the 22-year-old poet John Milton, to explore the contrasting moods of Mirth (L’Allegro) and Melancholy (il Penseroso), eventually advocating a ‘middle way’ of Moderation. Handel’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato was last recorded by the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists in 1981.

Photo: Bach Mass in B minor, Carnegie Hall, 25 October 2023/photographer: Stefan Cohen

Tour dates:

Bach: Mass in B minor

Friday 20 October 2023, 7.30pm
Harris Theater, Chicago

Monday 23 October 2023, 7.30pm
Richardson Auditorium, McCarter Theatre Center, Princeton

Wednesday 25 October 2023, 8pm
Carnegie Hall, New York City

Saturday 28 October 2023, 2pm
Paroisse Saint François d’Assise, Ottawa

Handel: L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato

Saturday 21 October 2023, 7:30pm
Harris Theater, Chicago

Thursday 26 October 2023, 8pm
Carnegie Hall, New York City

Reviews:

“Not only were the choral and instrumental contributions outstanding, but the performance benefited as well from a mostly excellent cast of soloists, detaching themselves from the chorus ranks” – Bachtrack (review of Handel’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato at Carnegie Hall)

“The soprano Hilary Cronin sang with a rich body and luminous purity …soprano Samantha Clarke was a font of grace, luxuriating in the music’s beauty with restful patience” – New York Times (review of Handel’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato at Carnegie Hall)

“Some truly marvelous performances … Soprano Hilary Cronin was a wonder with her lighter-than-air soprano” – New York Classical Review (review of Handel’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato at Carnegie Hall)

“The true stars of any work such as the Mass in B Minor are the chorus and orchestra, and the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists maintained consistently high levels” - Town Topics (review of Bach’s Mass in B minor at McCarter Theatre Center)