Jonathan Sells on his disc of Bruckner & Gesualdo with the Monteverdi Choir

Jonathan Sells (Photograph: Paul Marc Mitchell)

In April, the Monteverdi Choir launched a disc of motets by Bruckner and Gesualdo performed by Jonathan Sells on the Soli Deo Gloria label. Recorded reside in live performance in October final 12 months, this launch marks the Monteverdi Choir’s sixtieth birthday and the 2 hundredth anniversary of Bruckner’s beginning and represents Jonathan’s first disc with the choir. Jonathan is maybe greatest often called the inventive director of Solomon’s Knot, the conductor-less ensemble recognized for singing every thing from reminiscence. As a singer, Jonathan was additionally a member of the Monteverdi Choir, however extra just lately has been conducting them and has now been appointed Choir Director.

The brand new disc interweaves sacred motets by Bruckner and Gesualdo in a programme that begins with Palestrina’s Stabat Mater and contains Lotti’s Crucifixus a 8. Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) whose motets are influenced by the Cecilian motion for church music reform, and Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613), whose sacred music is notoriously intense and chromatic, may not appear apparent disc fellows, however Jonathan makes an actual case for the pairing.

For him, each composers’ music triggers comparable issues and the programme turned a dialog between similarities and variations. Amongst their similarities he contains that each wrote motets for the Catholic Church, utilizing comparable texts and the motets on the disc concentrate on the cross, the Crucifixion and Mary. Jonathan finds that each composers have what he calls an expressionist strategy to the harmonic language.

Gesualdo was working at a time when daring harmonic experiments have been occurring, the principles have been unfastened and the bounds of the harmonic language have been being explored. If we take a very long time body, then for Wagner comparable issues have been occurring, with him stretching the bounds of concord. And Jonathan feels that this harmonic expressionism speaks throughout the centuries. For him, when you hearken to the disc along with your psychological eyes closed, then you definately may not know the place in time the items come from and the extra works, by Palestrina and Lotti, serve to fill out that image. Palestrina’s music was the inspiration for the Nineteenth-century Cecilian Motion, and this impressed the purity and ease in Bruckner’s music. Jonathan admits that rather a lot is happening within the programme, however he hopes that point and area are short-circuited so we pay attention to every work by itself deserves and draw similarities the place we’d not intuitively see them.

Jonathan Sells & the Monteverdi Choir in Bruckner on the Previous Royal Naval Faculty Chapel, 2024 (Photograph: Paul Marc Mitchell

The disc opens with Palestrina’s Stabat Mater in an version by Richard Wagner. Once I ask Jonathan if the listener will discover Wagner’s modifications, he smiles and admits that the quick reply isn’t any. What Wagner did was a type of choral orchestration, deciding some passages have been solo and a few tutti. He makes use of Palestrina’s double choir, however then creates an extra semi-chorus in addition to solos. That is his greatest intervention, however there may be loads of articulation and quite a lot of completely different accents, plus the addition of extremes of dynamics (each very loud and really delicate), with sudden diminuendos and crescendos. What Wagner was doing was attempting to keep away from a bland efficiency, and to ensure folks carried out the work in what he noticed as the proper means, with a view to highlighting the textual content, and underlining phrases. Once more, Jonathan sees this as very expressionist.

While Bruckner was obsessive about Richard Wagner, however Palestrina was held up because the sine qua non of choral music. For the Cecilian Motion, this was the way in which folks must be writing choral music. For Jonathan, Bruckner’s choral music oscillates between Palestrina and the post-Tristan Wagner (ie Wagner at his most tormented and one million miles from Palestrina). Although recognized for his polyphony, Palestrina’s Stabat Mater is the truth is not very polyphonic however makes use of loads of block chordal writing. That is one thing Bruckner makes use of, his motets incessantly have a choral homophonic assertion at their opening, one thing that Jonathan feels has made the motets very emblematic with choral singers. 

This leads him to elucidate that the album can also be a dialog between stark homophony and polyphony. Bruckner tends to begin his motets with block homophony after which transfer on to polyphony. Whereas Gesualdo does the other, he begins with a single line, utilizing imitation to create polyphony after which issues cease. He makes use of a chordal entry on stunning harmonies for rhetorical impact, thus creating the other of Bruckner’s results.

The disc was made with fairly a big choir (some 37 singers) and Jonathan feels that you will need to level out that the entire programme is trying on the earlier music (Gesualdo, Lotti, Palestrina) by the Nineteenth century body. It will be doable to carry out the Gesualdo motets with simply 5 singers, however Jonathan needed to listen to them by a Nineteenth-century lens, including an additional layer of historic complication.

The recording was made reside at a live performance within the Previous Royal Naval Faculty Chapel in Greenwich. Jonathan likes reside recordings in the proper context and he factors out that reside recording displays the way in which Solomon’s Knot performs, inherently reside and dangerous. With the Monteverdi Choir, the impetus for the reside recording was partly sensible, although making the album in a single live performance day is a problem. The profit, as Jonathan sees it, is that you simply get a really particular impression, the recording displays the chapel in Greenwich. They gave the identical programme in Greenwich and at Ely Cathedral, and the reside performances in every have been fully completely different, reflecting the variations between the chapel and the cathedral. For Jonathan, you will need to hearken to the constructing and play to it.

Additionally, you may by no means recreate that reside expertise within the studio. For the Monteverdi Choir, that is necessary because the choir’s performances aren’t about crystalline perfection, with zero vibrato and shut miking, they aren’t attempting to create a rarefied manufacturing which requires a studio atmosphere. As an alternative, the Monteverdi Choir is far more coronary heart on sleeve with huge colors and choral virtuosity, triggering folks’s feelings within the listening room. This sort of efficiency is mirrored higher in a reside recording.

Jonathan Sells rehearsing the Monteverdi Choir in June 2024 at St Martin-in-the-Fields (Photograph: Frances Marshall)

That Jonathan sang with the Monteverdi Choir for practically ten years is a assist psychologically with regards to conducting them because it means he evokes the belief of the singers and gamers. In reality, singing within the Monteverdi Choir was an necessary a part of his coaching and improvement. As a conductor, he does not have a pre-set concept that he needs to impose on them; the choir has qualities that he extremely prizes. Shifting from singer to conductor was comparatively straightforward as there was a transparent divide as he has not sung with them since 2018.

He has labored with Solomon’s Knot for over 15 years, and this has helped put together him for his Monteverdi Choir position. For Solomon’s Knot he has at all times ready the music and the interpretation as a conductor would, however rehearsing from the within (Jonathan sings bass with the ensemble) letting the efficiency run free. Conducting the Monteverdi Choir is one thing new, he now has his again to the viewers for a begin! However he has a proficient group of colleagues and it’s a thrill to really feel their belief and perception in what he’s doing. He feels very lucky.

He’s now Choir Director for the Monteverdi Choir. Which means that he conceives his personal tasks with the choir, however he’s additionally accountable for the choir usually. The Monteverdi Choir and Orchestras (MCO) is shifting ahead with a number of completely different conductors, every with their very own completely different stream of labor together with Christophe Rousset in French Baroque and oratorio, Masaaki Suzuki in Bach, Peter Whelan in Handel’s oratorios and Bach’s Passions, and Jakob Lehmann in traditionally knowledgeable Rossini.

Jonathan prepares the choir for every of those, selecting the singers for the repertoire, rehearsing the choir and planning in session with the MCO crew together with inventive marketing consultant James Halliday. His key job is to keep up the choir’s profile, high quality and persona throughout completely different repertoire and with completely different conductors.

The choir has two appearances at this 12 months’s Edinburgh Worldwide Pageant. Jonathan shall be making ready them for his or her efficiency of John Tavener’s The Veil of the Temple, the mammoth eight-hour vigil which opens the pageant on 2 August [further details] the place the choir shall be joined by the Edinburgh Pageant Refrain, the Nationwide Youth Choir of Scotland, NYCOS Chamber Choir and the Royal Scottish Nationwide Orchestra, performed by Sofi Jeannin.