Lucile Richardot, Tenebrae Choir… A musical miracle in Vézelay

2023-08-27 14:35:10

The church of Vault-de-Lugny is particularly cheerful, warm. Its fan-shaped plan, its clarity, its pleasantly eclectic decoration make it a concert “hall” perfectly suited to intimate programs. As usual, under the both dancing and rigorous direction of Sébastien Daucé, the Correspondences set (10 singers and 9 instrumentalists) excelled with sensual elegance and radiant cohesion in a program skilfully constructed around the seven cantatas composing Member Jesus ours de Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707).

A song to the deceased father

In the midst of this flourishing music, the mezzo-soprano Lucile Richardot broke away from the choral collective to interpret, soberly accompanied, the chorus (“song of lamentation”) from the same Buxtehude. An aria in several stanzas dedicated to his deceased father, mourning the uprooting, evoking with pain and then recognition the paternal tenderness, praying for the eternal peace of the one who has left for a better world.

Possessed by the sublime simplicity of the music, Lucile Richardot gave the audience a masterful singing lesson and a moving example of eloquence: from bass to treble, from ardor to sweetness, from brilliance to whisper, based on dazzling mastery of breath and admirable control of phrasing. And, always, this tone so astonishing, coppery but velvety, sharp but touching, recognizable among all.

A path to Compostela

The next day, Saturday August 26, the evening concert at the basilica of Vézelay was also a marvel. From the first, abyssal notes of the Path of Miracles by the British Joby Talbot (born in 1971), the silence of the audience is enveloped in this deep and silky thickness which testifies to the greatest attention. Traveling with pilgrims to Compostela, the work commissioned almost twenty years ago by Nigel Short for his Choir of Darknesspresents itself as an initiatory journey in four stations, from Roncesvalles to Santiago, passing through Burgos and León.

The walker’s euphoric excitement is followed by anxiety, heightened by physical pain and moral doubt when the goal still seems so far away. Then the pilgrim is won over by a hypnotic trance, a lightening of body and mind before finally, his joy explodes into a gleaming hymn. The music then ebbs slowly, inexorably, like an increasingly distant wave, an echo, silence. Time and space abolished…

Incredible perfection

Very easy to listen to as it conjures up sometimes catchy, sometimes suspended rhythms, contrasting sonorities, nuances, textures and fragrant harmonies, the score seemed consubstantial with its interpretation, of an unheard-of perfection. The 18 singers and their conductor have risen to a vocal and emotional level that is rare to hear, further magnified by the basilica. The reverberation of the walls and vaults was the 19th voice of this exceptional performance.

Using with a perfect taste of spatialization and wandering effects, Path of Miracles is inspired by the “gesture” of Saint James – drawn largely from the Codex attributed to Pope Calixte II (1065-1124). Mixing languages ​​and styles, the work appeals without fuss but with unstoppable virtuosity to the extreme bass of the basses, the angelic suavity of the sopranos and the humanity of the middle voices. After a long silence marked by the last vibrations of the music, the spectators gave the artists the ovation they deserved. Burning like the fire consuming the clothes that the pilgrims burn facing the ocean, the journey accomplished.