Camerata marks birthday in style

June 20, 2005|Globe Staff

To celebrate the Boston Camerata's 50th birthday, the City Council officially proclaimed Saturday ''Boston Camerata Day." The city has abundant reason to be proud of this renowned ensemble; the group's way of celebrating was to perform its ''Carmina Burana" program for an enthusiastic Jordan Hall audience at the Boston Early Music Festival.

Camerata artistic director Joel Cohen put together this program 10 years ago, recorded it, and toured it widely. It was good to hear it again. Cohen noted that some of the medieval texts are famous through Carl Orff's perenially popular and ''raunchy" oratorio. His own effort was to reconnect the lusty poems to their original music or to suitable music of the period.

There was some very good singing by a current Camerata team, with veterans making strong showings: sonorous baritone Donald Wilkinson; soprano Anne Azema, singing with vivid imagination and delicacy of detail; tenor Timothy Leigh Evans, plaintively voicing the lament of a roasted swan. Among the relative newcomers mezzo Deborah Renz-Moore and baritone Aaron Engebreth promised a bright future, along with a lively group from the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum. Cohen led a vigorous instrumental group from his lute, and provided intelligent and amusing spoken commentary.

At the end, he brought onstage some people active in the Camerata at the time he himself joined back in 1963, including two former artistic directors, Daniel Pinkham and Victor Mattfeld, as well as tenors Charles Fassett and Richard Conrad, and Friedrich and Ingeborg von Huene, who played recorders made in their famous workshop. Smiling on from the audience was Nancy Armstrong, the most radiant of Camerata sopranos. Everyone onstage was then joined by a gigantic birthday cake.

Cohen's abilities as a program-maker are legendary; this was one of the few BEMF concerts of the week that didn't go on too long. For example, Friday night's concert featuring the BEMF Orchestra and various guest soloists lasted nearly three hours.