William Christie and Les Arts Florissants marked Holy Week at Wigmore Hall with a selection of Tenebrae Lessons and Responsories by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, written for liturgical use on the evenings before Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday. The Lessons take their texts from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, while the Responsories use brief extracts of passion narratives from the gospels. Together they form sombre meditations on man’s fallen state and eventual redemption through Christ’s atonement.
Charpentier’s music can be extraordinary – austere, beautiful, teetering on sensuous. The forces are small: one or two singers, tenor or baritone, and a handful of instruments, violins, recorders, viola da gamba, theorbo and organ. The vocal writing oscillates between syllabic declamation and passages of greater lyricism, melismatic, at times even operatic. Instrumental lines seem to grieve alongside the singers or wrap themselves round the voices in consolation.
A Tenebrae service takes place in gathering darkness as candles are extinguished one by one, and minimal lighting was used for the concert, which gave the music in an unbroken sequence with little to distract from the devotional mood. Credited as directing from the organ, Christie might better be described as the effective anchor of what to all intents and purposes was a chamber ensemble of equals, playing with superb focus, great refinement and real depth of feeling.
The singers were tenor Ilja Aksionov and bass-baritone Padraic Rowan, both immaculate. Aksionov with his slightly reedy tone, admirable liquidity and subtle dynamic control, sounded quietly intense in the Seconde Leçon de Ténèbres du Mercredi Saint, while Rowan proved vividly dramatic in the Troisième Leçon de Ténèbres du Mercredi Saint and attained remarkable depths of fervour in the Responsory Tenebrae Factae Sunt. Their voices blended wonderfully, meanwhile, in the Troisième Leçonde Ténèbres du Vendredi Saint and in the closing Responsorium Tristis Est Anima Mea, among the most beautiful things Charpentier ever wrote, with its chromatic harmonies and exquisitely entwining vocal lines. Breathtaking stuff, every single second of it.
