Monteverdi Vespers

Tickets booked online 25 (30 on the door)
Under 18s and fulltime students 10Cambridge Renaissance Voices join forces with The Musical and Amicable Society on period instruments to bring to life the golden age of Venetian music, when St Mark's Basilica echoed to the sound of Monteverdi's Vespers and music by his forerunner Giovanni Gabrieli.From the dramatic opening fanfare quoting Monteverdi's Orfeo to the closing hymn Ave Maris Stella celebrating the Virgin Mary and the city of Venice as 'star of the sea', Monteverdi's settings of psalms and motets in the Vespers will be combined in this performance with Gabrieli's lively instrumental Canzone and his spectacular polychoral motet Omnes Gente s. Both composers played a pivotal role in the shift in musical styles from the serenely interwoven lines of Renaissance polyphony to more dramatic elements of the Baroque, with rich choral sonorities, declamatory solo passages, and lavishly ornamented instrumental ritornelli. In Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610, the solemnity and splendour of religious rites meet the drama of early opera in a strikingly original fusion of vocal styles.CAMBRIDGE RENAISSANCE VOICES, directed by Rupert Preston Bell, was formed in 2013 from a group of singers with a deep experience of sacred polyphony. Many of the singers met in the Cambridge Taverner Choir, with whom they recorded CDs of Portuguese Renaissance music (shortlisted for the Gramophone Early Music Award), performing these works in monasteries and churches in Coimbra and Lisbon. The choir has performed in the great Suffolk wool churches of Lavenham and Long Melford, the Italianate church at Wilton, Sherborne Abbey, St Cross in Winchester, Boxgrove Priory, Kings Lynn Minster and Tallis's church at Waltham Abbey. Recent concerts include music from Renaissance Rome celebrating Palestrina's 500th anniversary, and a programme of 17th-century English music for voices and viols with Fretwork.'...beautifully controlled... The singers showed understanding and passion in their performance Early Music ReviewTHE MUSICAL AND AMICABLE SOCIETY, a collective of professional period-instrumentalists, was founded by Martin Perkins and Kate Fawcett in 2003 in homage to its 18th-century namesake. Performing in combinations ranging from consort to orchestra, the Amicables are renowned for their fresh approach bringing the ethos of chamber music to historically informed performances of Baroque and Classical repertoire. Recent performances include Bach's B Minor Mass in Oxford's Sheldonian Theatre, Handel's Samson in Southwell Minster, and Bach's Brandenburg concerti in Worcester's Henry Sandon Hall.