Vox Luminis-Café Zimmermann Ensemble Recital and Café Zimmermann Orchestra. Work: The Passion according to S.Juan de JSBach. Philamonic Society Room. Bilbao 8-IV-22
In addition to the beautiful performance of Bach’s Saint John Passion, another merit of the ensemble directed by Celine Frisch and Pablo Valetti lies in the vocal selection of the choir by Lionel Meunier. Each of its choral members, although they do not appear as soloists on theater posters, are not the anonymous vocal elements that usually fill the ensembles. The interpretation of Bach’s work featured voices so different and with such a varied color of timbre, that each of them, in their more or less important role, left a pleasant imprint of good taste, intonation and heartfelt expressiveness. If we have to highlight the vocal quality among them, without the due specification of their names, we would point to the tenor he played as Pedro teaching a good lyrical voice. It would be followed in qualitative merits by the also tenor who embodied a follower of Jesus and finally our memory goes to the very light tenor who sang the death of Jesus with so much feeling, as well as the expressiveness with which the soprano at the end sang with her timbra voice. The orchestra that reflected such a beautiful color on the keyboard, cello, viola da gamba and archlute even stopped for a few moments after Pilate’s intervention, for better tuning, an evident sign of the ensemble’s quality and interpretative concern. We live an elegant song interpretation and a precise and unison musical execution in the vocal. The choral elegance and at the same time its cohesion came from a group of barely eighteen rhythmic and assembled voices. The precision and style came to us from a very experienced musical ensemble in the baroque.