Both of these concerts, part of the Lufthansa Festival Of Baroque Music that year, looked superb.
For reasons of my own (work related) I had tried the more formal dining option at SJSS a couple of times by then and thought Janie would enjoy such a meal too. Turned out (as I suspected) the restaurant was all geared up for people who wanted to see the two concerts and dine in-between.
Here’s the splurge on first concert;
We hadn’t seen La Risonanza before, although we had, I think, seen Fabio Bonizzoni – at least I have his wonderful recording of the last Domenico Scarlatti sonatas.
It was a good concert, although I recall we liked the sonatas more than the duets. Not a comment on the skills of the singers, they were excellent, but the style of those baroque duets don’t tend to please us, we discovered.
We both enjoyed our dinner; very attentively and well fed we were. In many ways the SJSS dining-crypt has more atmosphere than the SJSS concert hall itself, which can seem rather large and cold at times.
But the highlight of the evening was this last chance to see The Hilliard Ensemble perform Morimur live. I had owned and enjoyed the magnificent recording of Morimur for some years by then and was delighted to have a chance to see that composite work performed live:
William Cole, on the Interlude blog, describes the Morimur concert that evening thus:
…the Hilliard Ensemble with violinist Kati Debretzeni gave quite simply one of the most extraordinary concerts I have ever attended.
Here is a link to the whole William Cole review.
Talk about going out on a high. By that December, the Hilliard Ensemble was done saying its goodbyes to the world and that (un-Sinatra-like) was that.
Of course it is still possible to get the recording of Morimur – click here for a link to general resources on it or the image below for one specific link – I would highly commend the recording.
We still listen to Morimur quite a lot – its haunting quality is just so moving. The alternating of chorale and violin music just works..at least it does for us.
As for that Baroque evening at SJSS – very memorable indeed.
