Advent song: Pärt, Tavener, Vasks, Rachmaninov and Vivaldi at the Wigmore

Christmas is coming, but we are not there yet. As Lord Griffiths reminded us here last Sunday, Advent has a unique quality of its own: a time to reflect on the mystery of the Incarnation. Last night at London’s Wigmore Hall an enthusiastic, at times ecstatic audience was treated to a feast of sacred music for Advent by two superb instrumental and vocal ensembles, plus a highly unusual percussionist as guest soloist.

From Sweden came the O/Modernt Chamber Orchestra, led by the British-born violinist Hugo Ticciati, who started his own festival, O/MODERNT (“Unmodern”). This tiny orchestra produced a richly sonorous backdrop to the choral pieces and came into their own in two luminous works for strings by the Baltic composers Arvo Pärt and Pēteris Vasks.  

Voces8, the a cappella octet, is celebrated here in Britain and abroad both for their versatility (embracing classical, jazz and pop music) and for their virtuosity, which was shown to stunning effect at last night’s concert. Yet it was the young Austrian hangdrum player and composer Manu Delago who almost stole the show with two of his own compositions, Wandering Around and Circadian. Both short pieces, accompanied by strings, were spectacular displays of the harp-like beauty of his instrument, with which he has accompanied musicians from every genre, from Anoushka Shankar to Björk.

The evening began and ended with “Mother of God, here I stand”, an anthem from the late John Tavener’s The Veil of the Temple. That vast, nocturnal magnum opus lasts seven hours, but this extract, a Marian hymn, is a perfect distillation of the British composer’s Orthodox devotion, to a text by the Russian poet Lermontov. A cleverly choreographed entrance by the singers from the back of the hall, singing as they walked slowly up to the stage, added to the sense of awe. This rapt invocation neither offers thanks nor seeks forgiveness, praying not to the Virgin but for her alone.

Without a break, we found ourselves in a very different auditory world: that of Antonio Vivaldi’s Magnificat, composed three centuries ago at the Venetian orphanage where, unusually for the time, girls as well as boys were trained to sing. Only a choir with dramatic as well as musical abilities could even attempt this work, which moves abruptly from Mary’s exultant rejoicing in her pregnancy to the sublime minor key section “Et misericordia”, in which she implores God to show mercy on them that fear him, through the martial vigour of “Fecit potentiam” and the bright vision of “Suscepit Israel” to the homophonic resolution of the concluding doxology.  

Like the Magnificat, the Nunc Dimittis is a Biblical canticle, but this time one of farewell to this world. Simeon, the old priest, begs leave to depart, “for mine eyes have seen thy salvation” in the child Jesus. When Arvo Pärt set this text 20 years ago, he was already 66 and one senses his profound identification with Simeon. This music is one of the pinnacles of “holy minimalism”, a somewhat misleading musicological designation that scarcely does justice to the grand revival of liturgical music towards the end of the last century, led by Pärt, Tavener (pictured above) and Vasks, along with the late Henryk Górecki. These already canonical masters have found worthy successors here in such British composers as Sir James MacMillan and Roxanna Panufnik — further proof that Christianity has life in Europe yet.

Pärt’s Nunc Dimittis ascends with characteristic bell-like transparency to a sublime climax: the infant brought to the temple to be circumcised is destined to be “a light to lighten the Gentiles”. The Jewish context of this New Testament text is as striking as the Christian message. Like Tavener, who saw his work as the embodiment of the insight that “no single religion could be exclusive”, Pärt’s music incorporates elements from Lutheran, Catholic and Orthodox musical and spiritual traditions, all three of which meet in his native Estonia.

After the interval came another Pärt classic, this time an instrumental piece: Silouan’s Song. Inspired by the text of a Russian Orthodox monk, Staretsk Silouan, “My soul yearns after the Lord”, this work is deceptive in its brevity and simplicity. O/Modernt gradually augmented its mighty chords to a monumental catharsis.

The audience had no respite before the ensemble segued into Vasks’ Lonely Angel, an ethereal meditation in which Ticciati had an opportunity to show his skill as a soloist. Vasks reworked this piece, a miniature violin concerto, from a string quartet and its gossamer textures convey the composer’s own vision of the eponymous angel. Of it he wrote: “This piece is a response to the pain” of “the ravaged Earth” — a testament to his lifelong environmental commitment which began during the Soviet era.

The Latvian composer, now 75, comes from yet another branch of the Christian family: he is the son of a Baptist pastor. Influenced not only by the Estonian Pärt but by the Poles Penderecki and Lutoslawski, Vasks is perhaps the most prolific of them all, yet his enormous oeuvre of secular and sacred music is still seldom performed here. There is no better introduction to this corpus than Lonely Angel and no finer performance imaginable than that of Ticciati and his colleagues.  

No sooner had this angelic vision died away than Voces8 returned to remind us that the Balts were not the first to revive liturgical music in the 20th century. Sergei Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil dates from 1915 and for the composer himself, if not the innumerable admirers of his more popular works, this setting of the Orthodox service is the consummation of his entire musical achievement. “Boroditse Devo” is a supreme moment in this liturgy: a setting of the Hail Mary which, it is easy to forget, is yet another Biblical canticle, expressing Elizabeth’s joy at the unfathomable blessing just announced to her cousin Mary by the Angel Gabriel. This unfamiliar Russian setting of such a familiar text was enhanced by the pellucid polyphony of Voces8, led by their director Barnaby Smith, who sings alto.

After the bewitching interlude of Manu Delano’s Circadian, the title piece of the hang player’s latest album, he joined Voces8 and O/Modernt in Tavener’s “Mother of God”. This finale was not quite a repeat of the opening verse, not only thanks to Delano’s subtle percussion, but because the journey the audience had travelled in a couple of hours added an extra aural dimension. When the music stopped, the applause was wild and continued unabated for a good ten minutes. (After such a perfectly bookended concert, of course, there could be no encore.)

In several decades of attending concerts at the Wigmore, I have never seen such an appreciative audience. This must have something to do with its youthfulness: evidently the £5 ticket offer for Under-35s is bearing fruit. If you are that young or you know someone else who is, please take advantage of this scheme , generously sponsored by Classic FM. I don’t believe anyone with the slightest ear for music, regardless of age, background or faith, could have failed to be enthused by music of this timeless quality. And this concert, like almost every concert at the Wigmore, will in due course be available online at the Hall’s Video Library. London is fortunate indeed to possess what is surely the most diverse and best small concert hall in the world.