A night of immense spiritual and acoustic comfort
One week prior to Good Friday 2025, countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo joined forces with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields under the direction of Tomo Keller. The programme featured excerpts from Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s lesser-performed symphonic piece, and the European premiere of LAIꓘA, a new work by contemporary composer Osvaldo Golijov.
The night opened with Haydn’s Symphony No. 26 in D minor, nicknamed Lamentatione. Composed early in his career, the work remains relatively lesser known and underperformed. However, it proved an apt choice for Easter, restrained elegance, mournful spirituality, and a hint of hope. Conducted by Keller as the first violinist, the chamber orchestra of ASMF interweaves serenity into the allegro, and the harpsichord implicitly embeds Baroque elegance and ornamentation, even when Haydn is seldom considered as a Baroque composer. The shift to F major in the adagio is gracefully seamless, and in the final minuet & trio, the orchestra offered a more passionate and vibrant interpretation, as if you may already imagine a spring in full bloom.
The super-star of the night, undisputedly, is Anthony Roth Costanzo. Brimming with a dramatic demeanour, this three-Grammy winner brought UK the premiere of LAIꓘA, a newly-composed work by Golijov written in collaboration with writer Leah Hager Cohen. This piece tells the story of the soviet space dog Laika who became the first living creature orbiting earth. Costanzo showcases incredible expressiveness and nuanced interpretation, truthful enough for you to believe they emerge from the soul and emotion of the stray dog himself, even as you’re fully aware that a countertenor shouldn’t, by any logic, be singing in a dog’s voice. He also proves his mastered skills to command Golijov’s highly-fluid, theatrical scores and Cohen’s intricate lyrics.
Costanzo’s great talent is again proved in Handel’s Messiah excerpts. Preceded by a brief reflection on the scandalous story of Mrs Cibber, Costanzo’s rendition of He Was Despised drew from a deep well of restrained emotion blending sorrow, ressentiment, moral fortitude, and dignity. Unlike some other male artists preferring to wear a campy “performative mask“ with exaggerated vocal affect to project a fatuous femininity, Costanzo carefully decodes the nuance emotional landscape of a character and then re-codes them through his own interpretive and expressive lens. There’s an undeniable authenticity in his voice even as you remain conscious that he’s a countertenor, not a soprano, and by all expectations, not meant to embody a soprano’s timbre.
The performance of the Academy’s orchestra, however, isn’t outshined at all. Their instrumental rendering of Couperin’s Premiere Leçons de Ténèbres brought waves of transcendental emotion that easily drowned you. Without the spiritual, guiding sopranos that sustain certain degrees of serenity and sombre, its religious context might be reduced, but the piece’s floating grief is still rather intact. Furthermore, the acoustic of St Martin in the Field also adds to a crisp and even sharp resonance to the strings, reflecting a sonic freshness which I enjoyed very much.