A conductor waves his arms in front of other musicians. The audience usually sees the maestro (less often maestra, still) from the back. Hidden from the concertgoers during the performance, the conductor’s face can convey infinite—if also potentially ambiguous—expressive information for the musicians in front of him as they play or sing: the pursed lips, the pleading frown, the nodding cue, the warning of a sharp look, the reward of a radiant smile.
For the simulcast audience at home staring at screens large or small, or for those looking up from their picnic hampers at a jumbotron during an outdoor concert, however, the conductor’s face can intermittently dominate, becoming an emotional confidante or even a bully. Leonard Bernstein in a sweat-soaked close-up, tells you how he feels and how you should feel too.
The looks were less extreme—never egomaniacal—but instead graciously, sometimes joyously uplifting from Nicholas Mulroy, who directed the Dunedin Consort at London’s storied Wigmore Hall on Tuesday evening for a program of music from the last two decades of the 17th century. He faced the audience, sang solo and in the vocal quartet that was joined by strings, recorders, and continuo.
At the center of the Dunedin’s colorful musical canvas stood Henry Purcell, whose genius was recognized during his all-too-short life and ever after. His music never went out of fashion, has been emulated and revered since his demise in 1696 at thirty-six, felled by a fever after being locked out of his own house in the City of London by his wife after a night of carousing at the tavern—at least, that’s one oft-told cause of death, though it has the ring of urban myth.
Around him in this picture of the London scene circa 1690 were gathered Henry Hall, a boyhood friend who remained a professional colleague across Purcell’s all-too-short but prolific life; a student, Giovanni Draghi, who journeyed from Italy to England—against the general cultural flow in the other direction—to learn from this “very great master of music,” as Purcell was praised at his funeral; William Croft, an epigone and successor as organist at Westminster Abbey; and, behind Purcell in this group portrait, his beloved and admiring teacher, John Blow. He had trained Purcell at Westminster Abbey; recognizing that his protégé had surpassed him, Blow turned over his prestigious position to the younger man, but then resumed the post after Purcell’s premature death.
A renowned Scottish period-instrument ensemble now celebrating its thirtieth year, the Dunedin Consort came with a dozen instrumentalists and singers, a smaller contingent than the forces that, for example, won a Gramophone Award in 2007 for their recording of the first version of Handel’s Messiah, as premiered in Dublin in 1742.
Now the group’s associate director, Mulroy’s name and leadership role for the evening were listed not at the top of the program booklet’s first page, but halfway down among the other musicians. On stage, he was among them, too.
He did not turn his back on the audience. He did not wave his arms, though, as one of the two tenors in the group, he did often reach out imploringly with his right hand while his left held his score. At other times, he leaned forward, extending his forefinger to draw attention to poignant musical-poetic passages. His glowing countenance communicated and complemented his ardent, ever-communicative voice, one that filled this modest-sized auditorium, famed for its warmly enriching acoustic. In this “temple of music,” as Mulroy called it, his singing retained a rhetorical immediacy and an ever-meaningful connection to the music—and to his listeners. Director Mulroy’s motions and expressions seemed made more for himself than for the audience, though we followed the gestures of voice and body and took their meaning with rapt attention.
Instead of conducting, Mulroy had curated and prepared the collaborative music-making. In both halves of the concert he offered engaging remarks on the personal connections between the composers and highlighted telling features of the works to be heard, especially in relation to Purcell’s transcendent example, as when he likened the ample proportions of John Blow’s grief-stricken An Ode on the Death to a favorite pet that stretches out and takes up too much space on the sofa with you.
The evening began with Purcell’s Welcome to All the Pleasures, one of his three odes to St. Cecilia, the patron saint of music whose feast day is tomorrow: the calendar smiled on this concert, as did the crisp, clear skies outside and the green and gold beams radiating from the art nouveau mural in the cupola above the stage. The Ode begins with an instrumental “Symphony” that proceeds with poise and pomp—grand and graceful flourishes, harmonic feints that avoid the obvious to linger regally on gourmet dissonances. At every turn, Purcell’s incandescent imagination flares up. Violinists Matthew Truscott and Huw Daniel emitted a 1960s mod-rocker vibe in their black suit jackets and tousled Beatles haircuts, Glorious Revolution hipsters who knew their craft and knew how to send that skill out into the hall. They played with unerring accuracy and flair, energized by a sense of discovery that was shared by Thomas Kettle, stalwart and stylish in the middle of things on viola. This aura of surprise was supported and commented on by a trio of buoyant continuo colleagues: Stephen Farr providing the sonic backdrop at a box organ the size of a backyard barbecue; tasteful filigree decorated the proceedings from Toby Carr’s long-necked theorbo; Jonathan Manson’s cello was propulsive, leading from below. This instrumental introduction made wondrous Purcell’s welcome.
The chorus of four—Jessica Cale, quick yet calm at soprano; tenor Samuel Boden, a more contained foil to the imploring but never intrusive Mulroy; and bass Chris Webb, was rousingly ruddy—made Purcell’s pleasures irresistible.
St. Cecilia thus oded, the singers exited through the lustrous wooden doors directly at the back of the stage that, when opened, allowed a fleeting glance into the Green Room, whose walls are thick with photos of some of the legendary musicians who’ve played at the Wigmore across Hall the 125 years since it opened.
John Blow’s unstoppably optimistic and inventive Chaconne in G set up the program’s other repeated bass patterns; as Mulroy rightly and reverently pointed out, Purcell became the unsurpassed champion of this technique. A Draghi trio sonata showed that the Italian had learned his lessons well and lively.
After the intermission came another francophone Purcell Overture reeled off in a distinctive London accent. Recorder players László Rózsa and Olwen Foulkes joined to mourn the hero’s death in the pastoral elegy by Purcell’s pal Henry Hall. Never were shepherds sadder, the loveliness of the forlorn music overcoming the hackneyed, though heartfelt, poetry by Hall himself.
Yet another Purcell Overture—uncanny how this composer could make the generic always be an adventure—set the tone for Blow’s lament on the loss of his prized pupil. The poetry was penned by the deceased’s sometime librettist, John Dryden, his text sung by the two high tenors, apparently the range of the singing voice of their departed friend.
After the lively dialogues between the pair of violins and the pair of recorders in a sonata from William Croft, played like a game of doubles in Restoration real tennis, the program ended with Purcell’s anthem “Raise, raise the voice.” Toward the end of this magnificent piece, Purcell serves up and elaborates one of his greatest of repeating bass lines, a riff of many rapturous measures decorated and danced around by voices and instruments, as if anticipating the advent of jazz by two centuries. As this rollicking figure got going, Mulroy stood listening in the midst of his musicians, as soprano Cale flurried and piped:
Mark how readily each pliant string
prepares itself an off’ring;
the tribute of some gentle sounds does bring.
The bass is relentless in its good feeling. Purcell cuts against its groovy grain with sinuous chromaticism, colorful off-piste harmonies, and kindred melodic mischief—shimmering garlands of delightful deception.
Mulroy’s face shone its most radiant as he listened, as if he couldn’t help but conduct with the expressions of his face, not exaggerated but honest in his infectious inability to contain his rapturous admiration. The soprano threads wove through the fabulous instrumental fabric, repeated then renewed in kaleidoscopic variety, finally allowing the lower vocal parts to enter “altogether in harmonious lays” for a few celebratory passes through the ground bass and then a quick acclamatory close.
With a smile he [Apollo] does all our endeavours approve
And vows he ne’er heard such a consort above.
Here’s a gladsome voice raised that the Dunedin Consort and Director Mulroy were heard down below in the terrestrial realms of the Wigmore Hall, all their faces turned to a rejoicing audience, the music they made proof that Purcell lives on.
(David Yearsley is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His latest albums, “In the Cabinet of Wonders” and “Handel’s Organ Banquet” are now available from False Azure Records.)
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