Lawrence Cummings | Andrew Benson-Wilson : Early Music Reviews +

Handel: Messiah
Academy of Ancient Music, Lawrence Cummings
Nardus Williams, Reginald Mobley, Thomas Walker, Ashley Riches
Barbican Hall, 15 December 2025

The Academy of Ancient Music (AAM) has a long and distinguished history with Handel’s Messiah, not least in being one of the first period instrument orchestras to record the piece in anything like the form, and with the soundworld of the original performance. After a stunning Messiah performance last year in the same Barbican venue, they returned for another sell-out performance with a new line of soloists Nardus Williams, Reginald Mobley, Thomas Walker, and Ashley Riches. I was impressed with all four of the coloists, although I did find the vibrato of the soprano a little disturbing, not least because the persistent pulse interfered with semiquaver runs. But, as with her colleagues, she expressed the words clearly and with meaning. The 18-strong choir similarly impressed, again with very clear diction and impressive consort. All four soloists excelled in adding historically appropriate ornaments and embellishments to the musical text. Of course, Messiah has no recognisable characters, as would be the case in an opera, so each recitative, accompagnato, and aria is a projection of the words, an essential component of Laurence Cummings’ interpretation, which he describes as a ‘Theatre of the Mind’.

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Bach: St John Passion
Academy of Ancient Music, Lawrence Cummings
Barbican Hall, 18 April 2025

Nicholas Mulroy, Evangelist, Dingle Yandell, Christus,
Carolyn Sampson, soprano, Helen Charlston, alto, Ed Lyon, tenor, Jonathan Brown, bass

Music has played a key role in religious occasions since the earliest times, and has played a notable role in most aspects of Western Christianity. When listening to pieces like the John or Matthew Passions or Messiah, I often wonder whether it is the words and the story, or the music that has the most highly charged emotional effect on those listening. For Christians, 3pm on Good Friday is one of the most sacred times of the year: according to one of the gospels, the moment when Jesus died after a three-hour-long crucifixion. In many Christian traditions, the whole day is devoted to fasting. But, for around 2000 people, 3pm was the start of the Academy of Ancient Music’s performance of Bach’s St John Passion in a packed Barbican Hall.

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