Hannah Morrison reviews

Recorded straight after the Monteverdi Choir’s European tour in 2016 celebrating Christmas in JS Bach’s Leipzig, this festive programme irons out many of the misgivings commentators had of the live performances. In the acoustics of St Jude’s, Hampstead, Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s step-out soloists are consistently strong, and their varied contributions mirror the alluring array of affects achieved by the ensemble as a whole.

British tenor Paul Agnew tackles an operatic triathlon here, as soloist (in the roles of Eco and Apollo), and as both musical and stage director of this new production of L’Orfeo filmed at the Théâtre de Caen. His mise en scène paints a series of pastoral tableaux with apt simplicity – a welcome change from the anachronisms directors often impose on early opera (though the singers’ actions would have benefitted from a little more direction).

It is almost 30 years since John Eliot Gardiner made his first commercial recording of Bach’s Great Passion, as his family were accustomed to call it. Gardiner’s approach has not significantly changed over the decades though one discernible difference is a mixed male and female voice texture for the alto strand of the choral numbers as opposed to the all-male countertenor line up of the earlier version. I prefer the mixed sound though some readers may not.