The Profeti della Quinta (Basel, Switzerland) join the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra for a concert of music of Monteverdi and Elam Rotem to biblical texts; instrumental works of Salomone Rossi

Profeti della Quinta (Yoel Levy)

Concert No.4 of the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra’s 31st season hosted the Profeti della Quinta ensemble No new faces to Israeli audiences or to JBO concerts, the Basel-based male vocal quintet - countertenors Doron Schleifer and Roman Melish, tenors Lior Leibovici and Jacob Lawrence and director Elam Rotem, with the group’s lutenist Ori Harmelin - performed  together with  members of the JBO, with Jerusalem. Baroque Orchestra founder and director David Shemer on the organ. This writer attended the concert at the Jerusalem International YMCA on February 23rd, 2020.

 

“Prophets, Scriptures”  was  a program of music of Claudio Monteverdi and Salomone Rossi, but also of works by harpsichordist, bass, researcher and composer Elam Rotem (b.Israel,1984). Of Monteverdi, a pivotal transitional figure in Venice between the Renaissance and Baroque periods, we heard works from his 1641 “Selva morale e spirituale” (Moral and Spiritual Forest) - the composer’s sacred anthology, one of startling stylistic range and variety. In the setting of  “Laudate Dominum” (Praise the Lord), Psalm 116, the shortest of all 150 Psalms, the singers called attention to the concise but vivid work’s “split personality” - its dancelike first section (interrupted by the curious descending chromatics colouring the word “misericordia”), as contrasted with the more formal, “Gloria Patri”, moving into homophony... very challenging vocal material, its instrumental score also offering plenty of interest. Written for six-part chorus (managed here by five) and soloists, with organ, basso continuo and two obbligato violin parts, in “Beatus vir” (Happy is the man), with its pairs or small groups of voices contrasting with the weight of the full chorus, the artists gave expression to the motet’s sheer joy, its lilting rhythms, solo moments and melismas, its recurring refrain exhilarating as it delivered its message over a sweeping ground  bass. Not ignored was the composer’s portrayal of the wicked man, “his desires thwarted, gnashing his teeth in angry envy” as compared to the blessed.

 

The largest-scale work on the program was Monteverdi’s 1624 “Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda” (Battle of Tancredi and Clorinda), set to a passage of Torquato Tasso’s epic poem “Gerusalemme liberata” (Jerusalem Delivered). This work – with its mix of love and violence, assimilation and confrontation, personal identity and agency, conflict of winner and victim, vocal and instrumental sections, a narrator occupying most of the composition (and two other characters who sing brief sections) - defies genre definition. With its vivid musical description of battle effects, as in the rapid repetition of sixteenth-notes, for example, it is considered to be the first instance of the “stile concitato”. The Jerusalem audience moved to the edge of its seats as tenor Jacob Lawrence (Australia) wielded its melodic and dramatic agenda with gripping, confrontational mastery. Engaging his well-anchored, substantial voice, given of easeful, natural sound production and flexibility, he set before the audience the piece’s many emotional aspects - its powerful dramatic urgency, its tenderness and pathos - as he narrated the many-faceted story word by word, gesture by gesture. The smaller vocal roles were handled well by soprano Liron Givoni and Lior Leibovici. A relatively new member of the Profeti ensemble, Jacob Lawrence has garnered experience in performance of opera and oratorio repertoire. Now based in Basel, he performs with leading European instrumental vocal and instrumental ensembles, singing music of the late medieval- to early Baroque periods. 

 

Israeli-born Elam Rotem, today residing in Basel, is a scholar whose research has, among other focuses, probed the music of Italian composer Emilio de' Cavalieri (c.1550-1602). Writing new works, Rotem has set several texts in Hebrew (his mother tongue), but in the musical style that flourished in Italy at the turn of the 17th century, the style contemporary to that of Cavalieri. His works form an important part of the repertoire performed by the Profeti della Quinta, with Rotem both singing the bass line and directing from the harpsichord. At the Jerusalem concert, we heard his richly contrapuntal setting of “Blessed is the man” (Psalm 1). Both sensuous and as sounding as richly “fragrant” as its very text, “Come with me from Lebanon” (Song of Songs) was given a spirited performance, offering the tenors the chance to duet, with a solo of finely-crafted, sensitive and bright singing by first countertenor Doron Schleifer, his voice warm, stable and of a convincing tessitura; the work concluded with dancelike exuberance:

“Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse, with me from Lebanon: look from the top of Amana, from the top of Shenir and Hermon, from the lions' dens, from the mountains of the leopards. How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse! how much better is thy love than wine! and the smell of thine ointments than all spices! Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon.”

Rotem’s motet “The Lamentations of David” (Samuel II,1:17-27) was premiered at this concert. Different from Monteverdi’s “Battle of Tancredi and Clorinda”, whose sonority endeavours to conjure up the actual battle scene, Rotem’s work evokes the emotional pain arising from the tragedy of war. With tenor (Jacob Lawrence) as narrator, it moved between the sentiments of official grieving and those of personal loss, subtly interweaving drama, anger, noble expression, tenderness and intensely sad, heartfelt gestures into the canvas. The singers’ profound enquiry into the work’s subject matter and elaborate musical fabric was direct, convincing and moving.

 

Interspersed between the vocal works, and creating fine balance and contrast in the program, we heard JBO players in a selection of instrumental works of Salomone Rossi. As a Jewish singer, violinist and composer at the court of Mantua from 1587 until 1628, he was ground-breaking in the field of synagogue music (with his settings of Hebrew texts). But In Rossi’s instrumental music, too often overlooked in today’s concert programs, he was no less innovating, with his application of the principles of monodic song, also his contribution to the development of the trio sonata and of an idiomatic and virtuoso violin technique. Of his four volumes of instrumental music (1607-1622), the JBO players performed Sinfonie and Sonatas in various “affetti” dance movements, giving much focus to fine playing on the parts of violinists Noam Schuss (leader) and Nahara Carmel. The instrumental combination, also including viols, theorbos, violone, harpsichord and organ, created a blend of exquisite timbres and delicacy. The concert concluded with an infectious, hearty performance of Rossi’s 1623 five-part strophic, largely homophonic setting of the Kaddish (“May his great name be exalted; sanctified is God’s great name”), joyous in its balletto style of writing, largely homophonic in texture and strophic in form. A concert of discerning programming and outstanding performance!

 

Ensemble Profeti della Quinta focuses on the vocal repertoire of the 16th and early 17th centuries, aiming to create vivid and expressive performances for audiences of today, at the same time, addressing period performance practices.  Based in Basel, Switzerland, where its members have been students of early music at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, the ensemble collaborates with colleagues from Switzerland, Japan and Australia. The Profeti della Quinta members have been active in performing and researching hitherto neglected repertoire as well as in recording music from the late Renaissance and works of Elam Rotem.