Bach's Mass in B minor, The English Concert, Bezuidenhout, St Martin-in-the-Fields review - solemnity and splendour

If not quite his last will and testament, the work now known as Bach’s Mass in B Minor represents a definitive show-reel or sample-book of the Leipzig cantor’s choral and orchestral art. Its complex patchwork of manuscripts dating from different decades only came together for a full public performance in 1859: the year in which Wagner completed Tristan und Isolde. 

So, in the form we know it, this is decidedly modern music, always open to exploration and renewal. At St Martin-in-the-Fields, Kristian Bezuidenhout and the English Concert chose – in choral terms – an almost-minimal palette. We heard just five ripieno singers in addition to the five who take solo parts, along with the Concert’s 20-strong period-instrument ensemble directed from the harpsichord – sometimes sitting, sometimes standing, sometimes positively leaping around – by Bezuidenhout (pictured below by Marco Borggreve).

We began in a severe, even austere, mood, with a grave stillness and almost liturgical solemnity, and even with a fairly restrained Gloria. Then, somewhere around (to my ears) the Gratias agimus tibi, Bezuidenhout seemed to engineer a notable quickening and brightening. Colours and rhythms intensified until, in the second half (from the Credo onwards) one vivid episode of emotional and musical drama followed another in rapid succession. A strong squad of soloists and – as always – some stellar Baroque playing from the Concert’s wonderfully accomplished instrumentalists meant that the soberly ecclesiastical, and the wholly human, Bach took turns to shine. 

In some stretches of a reverent but rather subdued Kyrie I felt that Bezuidenhout’s slow-burn strategy did the small band of singers a disservice. We had intimacy, purity and contrapuntal clarity but little hint of the passion to come, for instance in the refined soprano duet (Isabel Schicketanz and Joanna Songi) of the Christe. The natural trumpets (Mark Bennett, Stian Aareskjold, Simon Munday) blazed splendidly in the Gloria, while Songi displayed polish and authority in her Laudamus te. The temperature still felt a liitle on the chilly side – but then came the cumulative sweep and surge of the Gratias (with music that will return in the closing Dona nobis pacem) and, for me, something caught fire. 

In the Domine deus, Schicketanz and tenor Samuel Boden wove their lines elegantly together as the obbligato flute (Katy Bircher) wandered sweetly around them. Solo highlights then came thick and fast: the outstanding alto – French mezzo Lucile Richardot (pictured above by Franck Ferville) – in Qui Sedes, pungently partnered by the oboe d’amore of Clara Espinosa Encinas, and Florian Störtz’s robust but expressive and sensitive bass in the Quoniam, unforgettably matched with the Baroque hunting-horn of Ursula Paludan Monberg. Bach’s holiness has its wild, rough and earthy side: her punk virtuosity with this most untameable of brass beasts made it thrillingly audible. As for the choral swing and bounce of the Cum sancto spiritu, it heralded the zesty delights still to come. 

The fugal weave of the Credo had a propulsive bite, with glittering trumpets, notably hard-driving cello (Jonathan Byers) and, later, plangent, flavour-rich violins led by Nadja Zwiener. Bezuidenhout’s direction steered the slow, lingering pain of the Crucifixus into the explosive trumpet-enhanced joy of Et resurrexit with a sure command of both tempi and dynamics; and in Et in spiritum sanctum, Störtz’s bass spun his finely controlled lines with both elegance and warmth as the oboes embroidered the words with all their breathy, grainy charm. 

Now Bezuidenhout – almost dancing at his keyboard, his gestures broad and sweeping – had energy and excitement to spare. That brio was fully unleashed in the Et expecto – thunderously helped along by Stefan Beckett’s timpani – and then injected into a Sanctus that surged around us in mighty waves. We still heard that earlier solemnity, but now it felt buoyant and radiant as well. 

Choir (now divided) and director swayed and swung infectiously through the antiphonal exuberance of the Osanna, while the supple, noble tenor of Boden (pictured above by Marco Borggreve) again had flutes of distinction (Bircher and Rosie Bowker) in support for the Benedictus. Richardot brought a wide palette of expression, truly beautiful tone and striking vocal assurance to her Agnus Dei, while the final Dona nobis pacem rocked and rolled into a sort of ecstatic serenity. 

I had worried at the outset that we might be in for an expertly delivered but cool and rather distant Mass. By the close singers and players alike glowed, gripped and soared. In the right hands, and voices, Bach’s great farewell portmanteau can always sound, and feel, freshly-made. 

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