Concert
Elaine Borg, soprano;
Cappella Sanctae Catharinae, dir. Alex Vella Gregory;
Ludus Venti Ensemble, dir. Ulrich Barthels
St Lawrence Collegiate Church, Vittoriosa

It was a double celebration. What takes precedence in a wider Maltese context is the 450th anniversary of the Great Siege of 1565 during which Vittoriosa was in the thick of things.

It also happened to be the fifth anniversary of Cappellae Sanctae Catharinae (CSC), a significant achievement for the islands’ only male choir. Dubbed Pro Victoria it was with 1565 in mind, not the sheer coincidence that it was also the anniversary of Queen Victoria’s accession in 1837.

There was also the participation of Ludus Venti Ensemble, a five-member ensemble of German-Swiss-Italian formation and which as its name implies, involves wind instruments – ancient ones to boot.

The opening number was instrumental, with the mood-setting Battaglia by Tilman Susato which Ludus Ensemble, including tambour, performed walking down the aisle to the presbytery.

The first of two of the highlights of this evening was the Missa sopra la battaglia (Mass on the Battle), composed in 1596 by Giovanni Croce. The five sections of this Mass were sung with other vocal music interspersed with the proper of the Mass, namely after the Gloria, the Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei. The latter was the only one sung with instrumental backing. The smoothness and flow were maintained from beginning to end whatever the dynamics. Adding to the texture was the participation of soprano Elaine Borg in a leading cantus role. I just loved this singing with its frequent responses in high Venetian style with the CSC, not more than 15-strong divided into smaller and bigger sections and creating such widely divergent dynamic effects.

The music performed between sections of the Mass included the instrumental Sonata a 5 bombarde (Anon.) followed by the choir’s unaccompanied singing of William Byrd’s Ave verum corpus and Ludus Venti performing a 16th-century English dance on Gemshorns.

As director Ulrich Bartels explained, these instruments are made from chamois horns of various sizes. He also provided details of the other instruments, some of which are ancestors of the modern oboe and bassoon. They included shawms, cornetto, the Rauschpfeiffer and Kortholt. A longish instrumental introduction led to Di Lasso’s Da pacem Dominem.

The other highlight and final piece was Congregati sunt by the rather obscure Fernando de las Infantas (1534-1610). He wrote it in Rome in the same summer of the Siege so it is quite unique. This prayer for Divine assistance in times of peril was also very stylishly sung with a smaller chorus on the edge of the presbytery with a bigger section some distance behind in very crisp exchanges, with the smaller choir sometimes at their strongest but never out of control.

Not only was the very warm audience response regaled with an encore of the Missa’s Gloria, but amid the soon-silenced hubbub of a dispersing audience Ludus Venti gave a spontaneous couple of encores.

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