Portsmouth Baroque Choir in Fareham

 Portsmouth Baroque Choir, United Reformed Church, Fareham, March 22

Mention of the name Buxtehude will often elicit a response about 'the organ composer' but of the 29 discs of the extant complete works, only 4 of them are organ music. Thus, as part of its ongoing exploration of lesser-known repertoire, Portsmouth Baroque Choir had plenty to choose from along with pieces by Johann Kuhnau.

I have a programme from a concert by the Consort of Twelve that was in Bosham in October 1988. They have remained a stalwart presence in the area since 1982 but the only name that occurs on that programme and the one for this is Kate Goodchild so she deserves a special mention on a day when solo parts in the choir were widely distributed and it's going to be very unfair of me not to be able to namecheck them all.

Oboes took the part of trumpets in this non-period instrument performance, as in the opening Buxtehude, Ihr lieben Christen, and perhaps Frančeská Dante is noteworthy for playing one of those, cor anglais, recorder and singing at different times. In Dulce Jubilo, BuxWV52, benefitted from a warm tone in the choir without being quite, perhaps thankfully, the skipalong setting we might hear more often.

But while I'd finally found the ideal opportunity to wear my Buxtehude t-shirt by way of support, he was all but outshone by Kuhnau early doors and possibly went into the interval 0-1 down. Jennifer Kimber's cello strode out, laying a firm foundation in Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern which it was to do equally memorably in more than one piece, and any spotters of rare instruments would have been thrilled with Rachel Haggarty's dulcian. Chris Clark's arias involved some baroque tenor acrobatics before the lush chorale. 

Ich habe Lust abzuscheiden is a more shadowy thing, for those of us who prefer the half light to outright illumination, with further memorable cello chopping away in the alto aria.

Perhaps Portsmouth Baroque's greatest strength is its sopranos and in Gott, sei mir gnädig Ruth Sands and Lucy Bradley demonstrated two of the reasons why, filling an acoustic that might not have been designed with concert performance as a priority.

I'd been saving the oxymoron 'rich austerity' for use in relation to Buxtehude and not had much chance to use it until Jesu, mein freude which had such a Lutheran quality not least in Depart, you sad ghosts, the hymn-like chorus that Malcolm Keeler's notes very credibly suggest the young Bach might have heard on his extended away day to Lubeck.

Bach was even more present in the fuller flow and building of his arrangement of Kuhnau in Der Gerechte kömmt um with its pulsing woodwind.

Buxtehude is credited with his Magnificat on the same basis as some almost grudgingly allow Shakespeare his own plays - due to the lack of other plausible claimants - but since it sounds like him and carried forward features that we had heard the like of already, it is a safe enough attribution. The extended glorias passed around the assembled company to finish what was a gentle devotional evening for one still recovering from Shostakovich 10.

There is always fixture congestion in the concert schedules before Easter but Portsmouth Baroque took their share of the available audience. As ever, much credit goes to Malcolm Keeler as the mastermind of the enterprise but it is a shared experience and thanks also to those who also served but weren't mentioned by name on this occasion.