Ain iloidca! Ain riemuidca! in St. Mary's Church in Sastamala, the 27th of July, 2017

AIN ILOIDCA! AIN RIEMUIDCA!

 

On Sunday Lumen Valo performed on the Sastamala Gregoriana festival in the St. Mary’s Church in Sastamala. The theme of the concert was two-folded; Reformation 500 years and Finland 100 years celebrations. The medieval St. Mary’s Church was a gorgeous place to have this concert: one-nave church with stone walls made of huge blocks of stone plastered white and sand floor. The acoustics in the church is magnificent. And when the church is located by a lake, you could not find a more beautiful Finnish scenery and could expect the concert to be equally beautiful.

And a beautiful concert we definitely got. Lumen Valo is a lovely vocal ensemble and the versatile programme gave a good picture of their talent. Personally I liked especially the first part of the concert, which consisted of religious music in Latin, German and old Finnish. The programme included e.g. a short renaissance motet by Martin Luther “Non moriar, sed vivam”. In most of the songs of the first part, the ensemble was accompanied by Eero Palviainen, who played a theorbo.

The absolute undisbuted highlight of the concert was, however, “Terve, Jeesus laupiuden kuningas” (Hail, Jesus, King of Mercy) that was performed solo by Titta Lampela. Fastatically beautiful singing and so touching! A song cannot get better than this!

After the interval Lumen Valo performed a little bit different type of music, even though they did start with a few religious songs from the 17^th century. The least uplifting songs in my opinion were the songs from Juhani Komulainen’s Fantaisies Decorátives series, but I did like the songs from Sampsa Ertamo’s Four Koans series, which was a bit unexpected. They are performed in an imaginary language and the music is quite modern, but the combination worked rather nicely.

The whole ensemble was good, but my personal favourites became this time the sopranos Titta Lampela and Anna Villberg. Different vocal types, but both are excellent singers. Also the bass, Juha Suomalainen, sang beautifully and his talent as a performer could be seen especially in the last song by Ertamo, that is ”Allegro energico”.

The ensemble rewarded the lengthy applause of the audience by an extra song, which was Sergei Rahmaninov’s Virgin Mother of God (Bogoroditse Djevo) from his All-Night Vigil. A perfect end to a great concert.