Vivaldi and Pergolesi: Sacred Baroque – Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Queen Elizabeth hall, LONDON

Avast arc of a programme (11 November) promised to take us from the vivid cruelty of the Crucifixion – the vinegar, the blistering skin and bleeding wounds – to the joyful dance of the Gloria.

Instead we found ourselves caught somewhere between despair and delight, boxed into far smaller, neater emotions by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment which, rather than grapple with spiritual ugliness or ecstasy, gave us a Sunday School concert of very nice music performed very nicely indeed.

The response from the audience was warm. And why wouldn’t it be? On a rainy Monday night we had all turned out to hear baroque’s sacred equivalent of Top of the Pops and been greeted by elegant, unanimous ensemble performances, a couple of starry soloists and some talented new faces. If this had been a choral society concert then I’d have joined the applause enthusiastically. But this was one of the UK’s top period musical ensembles – specialists with the time to delve just a bit deeper into works that are rather more than their melodies, whose well-trodden surface has been rubbed a little too smooth and glossy by frequent hearings.