San Francisco Classical Voice

The collection begins with a prologue very like the prologue to an early Venetian opera; then a long series of duets (interrupted once by a big piece for six voices and violins), then four trios, then two quartets, and then what the composer himself called "other kinds of songs" (altri generi di canti), a category encompassing everything from long pieces in recitative to brief, catchy canzonette to a full-flown sung ballet score. Magnificat performed the prologue and two duets, two trios, both quartets, and five of the seven altri generi di canti. In other words, three pieces from the first half of the book, nine from the second. But why not? A lot of the most interesting stuff in the collection is towards the end.

The opening of the concert was, naturally, the 7th-book prologue, "Tempro la cetra," and it immediately put me in a bad mood. What is the point of doing a piece for five-part strings (including a substantial instrumental ballo at the end) with only two violins and a cello? The performance itself was excellent, with Scott Whitaker an eloquent tenor soloist and the continuo players doing their best to fill in the part of the texture where two violas ought to be. But, really, pleas of limited budget go only so far. If you can't afford all the players, don't do the piece — or at the least make it clear that you are doing your own reduction (which Magnificat didn't).

Thus endeth the harrumph. From then on it was almost all pure pleasure, beginning with the soprano duet on the Romanesca bass, "Ohimè, dov'è il mio ben," sung by Catherine Webster and Jennifer Ellis. The piece itself is astonishing (and a feast for agonizing-supension-lovers like myself), but this performance was astonishing too. Webster and Ellis are that very rare thing, a vocal duet in which the singers are even more impressive together than separately. Both singers are excellent — beautiful of tone, accurate, completely at home in the style (no mean feat in Monteverdi). But together they're something more than that.

I don't think I've ever heard duet singing like this. It was on the level of the best string quartet playing. It was perfectly blended, perfectly tuned, flexible and yet always in perfect sync, and with a dynamic range at the low end that most singers wouldn't dare. It was magnificent.

The duo did two other pieces in the program — "Io son pur vezzosetta pastorella," a light-hearted piece that turns bitter at its end, as the frivolous shepherdess of the opening line realizes that the one man she wants is the one who doesn't seem to notice her; and the splendidly jaunty "Chiome d'oro," a canzonetta with violin ritornelli that is (or anyway ought to be) Monteverdi's Greatest Hit. In all three pieces Webster and Ellis' unanimity was simply phenomenal; one would have thought it was one singer with two voices, if it weren't that their sounds aren't all that much alike. (Webster's is the richer and stronger of the two, but Ellis has the stronger lower pitches, which is why she takes the lower parts.)

Webster also sang "Se i languidi i miei sguardi," one of two pieces styled as "love letters" towards the back of the Seventh Book. Stewart, in his pre-concert lecture, noted laconically that the lover in "Se i languidi" has a "hair fetish"; we can be grateful that Monteverdi actually cut seven lines from the original poem about the beloved's hair, plus a further fifty-six about her eyes and mouth. I would rather have heard the other "letter," "Se pur destina," which is a much better piece; but Webster made more music of "Se i languidi" than has anyone I've heard in it, on record or off. She handles ornament, especially, with rare ease, taking something out of a treatise and turning it into a gesture as natural as a flip of the hand. There is a kind of embellishment in early 17th-century music called trillo and commonly called "goat's trill" today — a rapid rearticulation of one note — that usually comes out at best as a bleat and at worst as a cheap comedian's parody of a stutter. Webster can do a sultry trillo. Don't ask how, just marvel.

This is the point at which to acknowledge violinists Joliane von Einem and David Wilson, who lit into "Chiome d'oro" with gusto, and made even the eviscerated "Tempro la cetra" fun. Von Einem's ornamentation all afternoon was just about ideal — the polar opposite of what I've called "Stupid Ornament Disease." It was intelligent, seemingly spontaneous, well-fitted to the music. It worked. And so did Wilson's ornaments, and the singers'.

Von Einem and Wilson performed two works of Salamone Rossi on the program; it's neither their fault nor his that they paled before all this vocal splendor.

The mens' pieces weren't quite so spectacular, but they were delightful: the duet "Tornate, o cari baci" (Whitaker and Mark Molomot, tenors) and the trios "Augellin" and "Eccomi pronto ai baci" (Molomot, Whitaker, and bass Hugh Davies). Molomot was billed in the program as an "alto," but he sang the first tenor parts in all these, as well as the tenor in the quartet "Al lume delle stelle" and the alto in the other quartet, "Tu dormi?" (this last is possible for a tenor, but very high; Molomot seemed to be singing in "natural" voice throughout, not falsetto). It was a particular pleasure to hear the quartets performed for once, especially "Al lume delle stelle," one of Monteverdi's most amazing short works, almost completely unknown.

Also "Amor che deggio far?," the lesser-known sibling of "Chiome d'oro," for four voices and two violins. Here I think Stewart miscalculated for once, asking the singers to slow up dramatically at the questions that end each of their lines. It's a canzonetta, not a drama; the questions are meant to be as carefree as the music, and the "Ingiustissimo Re" of the text is just a little Cupid.

The ballet Tirsi e Clori closed the program — in tribute, Stewart said, to the performance ten years ago that launched Magnificat as an independent ensemble. I doubt that that performance was as good as this one — Magnificat's current team of singers rocks. But Tirsi, like "Tempro la cetra," could use a pair of violists. And I seem to remember that ten years ago they had them. Oh well.

(Michelle Dulak, editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, is a violinist and violist who has written about music for "Strings," "Stagebill," "Early Music America" and The New York Times. )

©2002 Michelle Dulak, all rights reserved