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Sara Mingardo and friends, Wigmore Hall, London, review: A shining hour of Monteverdi

Sara Mingardo
Sara Mingardo

Who better to render the Venetian music of Monteverdi than a Venetian singer? The contralto Sara Mingardo is Venetian born and bred, and for this lunchtime concert she brought along her star pupil Francesca Biliotti, who is also a contralto, as well as the theorbo-player Giovanni Bellini and the harpsichordist Giorgio Dal Monte.

The menu consisted of songs – some solo, some duets - from the seventh book of madrigals, interlaced with instrumental works by the 17th century masters Kapsberger and Frescobaldi.

The fact that the duets were written with tenors in mind, rather than female singers, was clearly no problem when the pair launched into ‘Ohime,dov’e il mio ben?’ – ‘Alas, where is my love?’ The two contraltos were nicely matched as they delivered the overlapping and/or interwoven melodic lines; both had bags of power and a big palette of vocal colour.

And each madrigal was a compressed drama. These could be sly and comic, as in ‘Vorrei baciarti’ ('I want to kiss you’), where the poet can’t decide whether it should be on the eyes or – more productively – on the lips. Or they could be punctuated by mock-tragedy, as in ‘Zefiro torna’ (‘Return, gentle breeze’). Or they could be a glorious riot of virtuosity, as in a symbolic rumination on the bird which lives to sing, and the poet who dies singing.

This shining hour can be heard for the next four weeks on the BBC iPlayer.