The Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists transport you to seventeenth-century Venice, and the splendour of the Christmas Eve celebrations at St Mark’s Basilica.
Giovanni Gabrieli – Canzon duodecimi toni a 10, C 178
Heinrich Schütz – Hodie Christus natus est, SWV 456
Claudio Monteverdi – Messa a 4, SV 257
Giovanni Gabrieli – Quem vidistis, pastores, C 77
Claudio Monteverdi – Confitebor III ‘alla francese’, SV 267
Giovanni Gabrieli – Sonata [6] a 8 ‘pian e forte’, C 175
Giovanni Gabrieli – O magnum mysterium, C 3
Claudio Monteverdi – Beatus vir I, SV 268
Alessandro Grandi – Missus est Gabriel
Giovanni Gabrieli – Magnificat a 14, C 79
Monteverdi Choir
English Baroque Soloists
Francesco Corti Conductor
Soloists
Jiayu Jin – soprano
Sonia Tedla – soprano
Nicholas Scott – tenor
Jacob Lawrence – tenor
Hugo Herman-Wilson – baritone
Alessandro Ravasio – bass
Harpsichordist and conductor Francesco Corti leads a festive programme that unites three composers at the heart of the Venetian school and its international influence: Gabrieli, Schütz and Monteverdi.
Giovanni Gabrieli was the defining figure of the Venetian polychoral tradition, writing magnificent works for spatially-separated vocal and instrumental choirs that exploited the immense architecture of St Mark’s. His student, Heinrich Schütz, fused the grandeur and theatricality of this Venetian style with the Lutheran intimacy and theological intensity of his native Germany. And Monteverdi, who became maestro di cappella at St Mark’s not long after Gabrieli’s death, brought his unique sense of drama and emotional immediacy to Venice’s ceremonial musical tradition.
Taking the Christmas Eve services as our guide, this programme weaves together the psalms and grand Magnificat of Vespers with the Mass and instrumental sonatas for Midnight Mass. This music is the raison d’être of the Monteverdi Choir, and together with the specialist period-instrument players of the English Baroque Soloists, they will recreate the glorious sound-world of a seventeenth-century Venetian Christmas.
