Saturday 21 February 2015 – Gabrieli Consort & Players in Bath Abbey

The real surprise of this final concert was the impact of Handel’s early Italian cantata Donna, che in ciel, written in Rome in 1707 for a celebration of the safe escape of the city from an earthquake. There is no hint here of the composer’s Lutheran upbringing as he immerses himself in the world of Italian opera and a Catholic theology which most Catholics would find difficult today.

The work is built around four arias, originally for castrati, but here sung by soprano Gillian Webster. The first and third arias are heroic pieces which use all the tricks of the baroque castrati and which caused no problems for Gillian Webster’s fluid coloratura. The second aria however is in a very different vein, its gentle softly unfolding melody as fine as anything he was to write in later operas.

A slight, unannounced, change to the order of the programme meant that the concert had opened with Corelli’s Concerto Grosso Op6 No4, which sparkled like sun off the Venetian Lagoon. The acoustic in the Abbey seemed to be particularly sympathetic to the light string writing and the heady counterpoint which Corelli creates.

Handel’s Dixit Dominus is more familiar to us but it is rare to find it as vibrantly attacked as it was under Paul MacCreesh and his Gabrieli forces. The opening chorus caught fire instantly and this seemed to carry through with an unstoppable force right up to the vibrant in saecula saeculorum.

This year’s Bath Bach Fest has proved yet again that small scale festivals can have all the excitement and quality of much larger events. Long may it continue!