A new musical initiative was launched over the May Bank Holiday weekend. The Oxford Early Music Festival, which is the inspiration of the younger generation of the musical Ashby family, aims to fill a gap in Oxford’s already overcrowded music calendar. And it seems to have found a niche, attracting good audiences for the four concerts comprising the first Festival. These cover music from the Renaissance to the time of JS Bach. I was only able to attend the first two concerts of music by JS Bach: the B minor Mass and a programme consisting mainly of arrangements of works for solo violin and viola da gamba. The other two were a concert Treasures of the Renaissance by Stile Antico, a twelve-voice vocal group founded by the Ashby sisters in 2001 now with an established international reputation, and a concert of works by Bach predecessors by Oxford Baroque. All the performers shared a youthful enthusiasm and exuberance; many, both singers and instrumentalists, belonged to more than one group.

The B minor Mass was performed in the University Church by The International Baroque Players, formed in 2009 with some twenty players and a thirty-strong chorus Ensemble 45, formed in 2008. The soloists included soprano Catherine Bott, now well known to BBC Radio 3 listeners as broadcaster and presenter. The alto was veteran countertenor James Bowman, voice still pure and steady after a career of nearly fifty years. Tenor and bass were Nicholas Mulroy and James Birchall. With this line-up the packed audience were anticipating an authentic eighteenth-century experience. They were not disappointed. However…

An excellent programme note by James Butt summarised the controversies over the origins, purpose and performance history of the work. But whatever the liturgical significance, whether Lutheran or Catholic, or, whatever the beliefs of the listener, whether religious, agnostic or atheistic, there is no doubt that hearing it is a spiritual experience wrapped in the carapace of the Christian Mass. It therefore came as a great shock when there was a break before the Credo during which the audience lined up for wine as if a secular Offertory and Communion had been inserted in the wrong place.

The Kyrie eleison started well at a steady pace, matching well the acoustics of St Mary’s Church so that both chorus and orchestra could be clearly revealed as fine musicians. However, it was apparent that the chorus was extremely treble-heavy, a celestial sound swamping the tenors and basses; the tenors were impressive when they could be heard. The Christe eleison introduced Catherine Bott and James Bowman whose voices blended beautifully. The first sign of idiosyncrasy became apparent in the next soprano aria, Laudamus Te, where there was a battle of wills between soloist and orchestra over the tempo. Quoniam introduced the very fine bass voice of James Birchall and horn-player Anneke Scott. Now the pace was very brisk, at almost breakneck speed for the horn – virtuoso rather than obligato. These movements epitomised the total performance – the youthful enthusiasm, and exuberance of chorus and orchestra but with constant tension between them. The former appeared to be trying to steady the pace in order to convey the words, while some beautifully phrased playing of the individual instrumentalists and orchestral tutti tended to press on regardless, led by what was described to me as a proactive timpanist. The result was exhilarating!

On the Sunday afternoon, Bojan Čičič (violin) and Susanne Heinrich (viola da gamba) played solos and duet arrangements of works by JS Bach in the beautiful stained-glass lit Church of St Mary Magdalen, an ideal acoustical and spacious setting for such music. The programme opened with transcriptions of two of the two-part Inventions for keyboard. There followed the outstanding performance of the afternoon, a wonderfully sensitive interpretation of the third Sonata for solo violin. A Duetto and a Fantasia arrangement completed the programme together with a transcription for viola da gamba of the fifth Suite for cello. The last was the least successful of the arrangements, requiring a retuning of one of the strings, not fitting the gamba at all naturally. Perhaps because of this, it received a very tentative performance.