The Dunedin Consort at Wigmore Hall: Caroline Shaw premiered alongside rare Stradella and Christmas Corelli

Signed handwritten draft of Thomas Hardy’s The Darkling Thrush with original title

Pietro Antonio Locatelli: Concerto grosso in F minor Op.1 No.8; Alessandro Stradella: Ah! troppo e ver, Sonata di viole ‘Concerto-concerto grosso’, Caroline Shaw: The Holdfast, Arcangelo Corelli: Concerto Grosso in G minor Op.6 No. 8 ‘Fatto per las Nottle di Natale’; Rachel Redmond, Joanna Songi, Helen Charlston, Samuel Boden, Ashley Riches, Dunedin Consort, John Butt; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed 23 December 2024

The premiere of a fascinating new Caroline Shaw piece that explodes Thomas Hardy’s Darkling Thrush at the centre of a concert that placed the Shepherds and Winter at the centre of a wonderfully engaging and imaginative programme. 

The Dunedin Consort‘s concert at Wigmore Hall on 23 December 2024 drew together various fascinating threads. Directed by John Butt and joined by sopranos Rachel Redmond and Joanna Songi, alto Helen Charlston, tenor Samuel Boden and bass-baritone Ashley Riches (Matthew Brook had been previously scheduled, but no announcement was made) the Dunedin Consort gave us a nod to the season with Corelli’s Concerto Grosso in G minor Op.6 No. 8 ‘Fatto per las Nottle di Natale’, Pietro Antonio Locatelli’s Corelli-inspired, Concerto grosso in F minor Op.1 No.8, Alessandro Stradella’s Christmas cantata, Ah! troppo e ver alongside his Sonata di viole ‘Concerto-concerto grosso’ plus the premiere of Caroline Shaw‘s The Holdfast.

Stradella seems to be having something of a moment, and we caught another of his Christmas cantatas, Si apra al riso ogni labro at Wigmore Hall on Saturday performed by the English Concert [see my review]. The Dunedin Consort’s concert featured a cantata which uses concerto grosso-like forces in the accompaniment, solo trio of two violins and cello against ripieno ensemble, but more fascinatingly they also included Stradella’s Sonata di viole ‘Concerto-concerto grosso’ which uses these same forces without the vocal accompaniment to create what is regarded as the first concerto grosso. This form would go on to have enormous influence, and Corelli’s Opus 6 would cast a long shadow, on Locatelli and beyond. 

Caroline Shaw’s work also crossed our path recently as the Kyan Quartet played her Valencia and Entr’acte at Conway Hall earlier this month [see my review]. Her new piece, The Holdfast was written for the Dunedin Consort (a co-commission with Wigmore Hall) and Shaw uses the same instrumental forces as the Stradella cantata plus the same soloists. It is not a Christmas piece, but it is most definitely a Winter piece, centred around text taken from Hardy’s The Darkling Thrush, edited, adjusted and amplified by Shaw. 

We began with Locatelli, writing in 1721, seven years after the publication of Corelli’s posthumous Opus 6 concertos. Locatelli adds a viola to the solo mix in the concertino group but otherwise sticks to Corelli’s structure. Slow-fast-slow-fast-fast-pastoral. There was a certain lushness, here, to Locatelli’s texture and harmonies, he really relished what he could create with his juxtaposition and combination of solo quartet and ensemble.

Stradella’s cantata Ah! troppo e ver is intriguing in many ways. Whilst it does present the story of the Shepherds journeying to Bethlehem to see the Christ Child, it also includes a role for Lucifer who worrits away at the effect the birth of the Christ Child will have. So, after an opening sinfonia which moved between vivid vigour, intimacy and lyrical pastoral, things were interrupted by Ashley Riches’ wonderfully dramatic and bad tempered Lucifer, complete with a brisk aria full of fascinating textures and vividly dark-voiced recitative, the scene ending with a chorus of furies where Stradella seemed to delight in the complex textures he could create with four solo voices and his concerto gross instrumental ensemble. From then on, the story telling was done by giving the various characters an aria and recitative. Rachel Redmond was an urgent, appealingly plangent Angel, Samuel Boden a perky, dancing Shepherd, Joanna Songi a hauntingly expressive Virgin Mary, Rachel Redmond a simple Shepherd singing to harp accompaniment, and Helen Charlston a poised Joseph. The whole ending with a richly textured Coro full of vigorous joy.

Part two began with more Stradella, his Sonata di viole ‘Concerto-concerto grosso’ which proved to be a lovely sequence beginning with a lively call and response between soli and ripieni, full of excitement, then a robust dance, something rather more galant and ending with a lovely triple-time movement. A more than fascinating beginning.

Caroline Shaw’s The Holdfast takes Thomas Hardy’s The Darkling Thrush but inserts into it three of her own texts to create a five-movement work with a pleasing element of symmetry that becomes a meditation on the themes from Hardy’s poem. Shaw amplifies these via the idea of Lichens, where a holdfast is the structure that attaches the lichen to its support, but then there is the idea of holding fast to your beliefs. Largely the voices were written for as a vocal ensemble, often five-part, homophonic, with the five singers standing at the back of the stage behind the ensemble. Shaw seems to have relished the array of textures and timbres she could create using the period instruments and the work was full of contrasts, between the smooth vocalism and the sharp timbres of plucked strings, then there was the vividly strong harpsichord sounds and the aetherial harmonics on gut strings.

A strong opening gesture seemed to settled to nothing leading to a setting of Hardy’s poem that gave the words primacy, we could hear each one, Shaw’s rather traditional vocal writing being moulded by quirky details and contrasted with the vivid instrumental writing. In the middle came a striking round, then an evocation of the Lichens via their names, smooth voices against plucked strings, intensity and excitement increasing. A second round, linked musically and textually to the first, led to the remainder of Hardy’s poem, with the music linking back to the opening movement. Yet at the moment Hardy’s words refer to the way the thrush, ‘Had chosen thus to fling his soul/Upon the growing gloom’ the whole texture exploded, only gradually returning to the opening as Hardy talks about ‘Some blessed Hope.’

The result was a fascinating and intriguing, one of those pieces that really needs a second hearing. 

We ended with Corelli, his Christmas concerto. Still a miracle of imagination and expressivity, the way he relishes the textures of his solo group against the ripieni in the slow opening, the sustained solo violins against the vividly urgent strings in the Allegro, the more intimate moments where trio sonata textures predominate, the stylish dance movement and of course the final pastoral, evoking again the Shepherds. But here, I noticed too the drone effects which almost suggested the musette, and I wondered whether that was a thing with 17th century Italian shepherds!