★★★☆☆
Bach’s two cantatas on the chorale Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland nestle next to each other in the catalogue, BWV 61 and BWV 62. The sense of anticipation in both is far removed from our cosy notion of Advent as the prelude to a Nativity scene with ox and ass and a baby in the manger.
In the 1714 Weimar setting (BWV 61), performed by La Nuova Musica under David Bates, the chorale is introduced by pairs of voices in awestruck, adamant unison (soprano and alto, alto and tenor, tenor and bass) against a glittering fabric of icy double-dotted strings.
Beautifully phrased by the violins, with a ravishing glow to the sunburst of the first four-part choral writing, La Nuova Musica’s reading felt a little too comfortable. While the orchestra delivered vivid details under Bates — a striking diminuendo in the pizzicato accompaniment of Siehe, ich stehe, and a suave, assertive solo from the cellist Alexander Rolton — this was not matched by the eight singers. Sweet, clear, well-produced voices are not enough. The final chorus, with its bell-like carolling, was almost perfunctory.
The soprano Lucy Crowe illustrated the difference between consort and solo singing in Bach’s 1730 cantata Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen, biting into the consonants, sprinting daintily across two octaves of coloratura writing, blanching then adding blush to her tone in duet with the trumpeter David Blackadder. Bates’s uptempo Brandenburgian approach gave a lift that continued in Mozart’s Exsultate, jubilate, written for the castrato Venanzio Rauzzini. Crowe and Bates feminised the motet with playful cadenzas that hinted at The Marriage of Figaro and the C minor Mass.
Haydn’s Missa Sancti Nicolai closed the concert, its mellow cheer offset by a sudden chill of dissonance in the Agnus Dei and enhanced by the warmth of horns and oboes, and the rich, firm singing of the mezzo-soprano soloist Anna Harvey.