World-class, first-rate, wonderful, excellent, fantastic, amazing …

We attended three concerts today, in fact, all five concerts that we have heard so far at the Saintes Festival have been over the top incredible. Unfortunately for us, the Festival actually began on July 12th while we were still on tour in Vienna, so we missed quite a few concerts.

Today’s concerts which we attended included:

International Suspirium was a group of five. Violinist MengHan Wu was from Taiwan; soprano Iris Bouman was from the Netherlands; Gala Lozynska, baroque cello, was from Ukraine; Jeremy Bass played baroque guitar and was from the United States, and Punto Bawana played the theorbo and was from Indonesia. All of them were absolute virtuosos on their instruments, and all improvised. I was especially impressed with the Taiwanese violinist. You’re probably wondering, how did five people from five different countries find each other? They were all students in Utrecht, Belgium and played a program of 17th century Italian love songs by Biagio Marini, Claudio Monteverdi, Giulio Caccini, Stefano Landi, Marco Uccelini, Giovanni Felice Sances, Girolamo Frescobaldi, and Benedetto Ferrari.

Le Caravansérait, a chamber orchestra, with soprano Rachel Redmond presented a program of music by John Blow, Henry Purcell, William Croft, Jeremiah Clarke, John Eccles, Daniel Purcell (brother of Henry), and Georg Frideric Handel. The ensemble was directed by Bertrand Cuiller who also played harpsichord and organ.

I absolutely loved the voice of Rachel Redmond, whose bio reads:

Described as an “impressively silken soprano” (The Times) and “resplendent” (The New York Times) Rachel Redmond began her career with the prestigious Jardin des Voix, performing with Les Arts Florissants under the direction of William Christie and Paul Agnew in France, Spain and New York. Rachel Redmond was born in Glasgow and sang in the Junior Chorus of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra before studying at the Music School of Douglas Academy, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS), and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She was awarded the Florence Veitch Ibler prize at the RCS for oratorio performance.

Gli Angeli Genève performed three bass Bach cantatas, directed and sung by Stephan MacLeod: Cantata 82, Ich habe genug; Cantata 158 Der frieded sei mit dir, and Cantata 56, Ich will den Kreuztab gerne tragen. They opened the concert with Henry Purcell’s Hear my Prayer, but sang at baroque pitch to match the key of C minor of Cantata 82 which segued immediately following. To my ears, this sounded a little strange, but was probably more authentic! MacLeod had a rich baritone voice and his conducting the orchestra then turning around to sing the solo reminded me of what Carl Crosier used to do. The ensemble also sang Antonio Lotti’s Crucifixus and Johann Christoph Bach’s Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen. We were certainly impressed with baroque oboeist Emmanuel LaPorte who had a number of virtuosic solos. I told Bill Potter that three bass Bach cantatas in one concert was perhaps a bit too much, but the audience again demanded an encore.

Earlier I had said that we came late to the Festival and missed several days of concerts. We are also choosing to skip out on some programs especially those that start at 11 pm!

We were expecting hot weather in Saintes, but until today, it has been quite pleasant with highs around 75°-79° F. Today, however, it reached 89° F and I’m grateful for this portable fan given to me by Yoko Kokuni Kessner. I made good use of it in Switzerland and now here in Saintes!