Hazard Chase Concerts Easter 2002 - Rick Jones
Although Western society is today largely godless, its music still conforms roughly to the church's year. Musicians find themselves busier at Christmas and Easter, and Lent inspires the saddest, most beautiful works. The Cambridge-based artist management company Hazard Chase, together with BBC Radio 3, stage and broadcast an annual sequence of lunchtime concerts during Holy Week ending on Good Friday with Polyphony's excellent performance of Bach's St John Passion at St John's Smith Square.
The other concerts all take place at the Temple Church in the heart of legal London. It has stunning acoustics. The Temple Church Choir performs Lotti's Crucifixus there on Wednesday. The parts hang in the air like corpses, stinging with thorny discords as they collide. The programme also includes Part II of Tallis's Lamentations. Part I is performed by the choir of King's College Cambridge on Maundy Thursday. Jeremiah begs Jerusalem to repent. The sentiment has extra poignancy when Israel is at war.
Monday's concert features the hurdy-gurdy, harp and voices of Joglaresa performing a medieval portrait of the prostitute Mary Magdalen. Tuesday's brings the baroque strings of Sonnerie with bass Tom Guthrie to perform works by Biber and others. Biber or be square, as they say.