Capella de Ministres in the St. Lawrence Church in Vantaa, the 10th of August, 2019

The Vantaa Baroque Festival somehow always manages to find interesting performers. The Spanish group “Capella de Ministres” performed in the St. Lawrence Church in Vantaa under the headline “Lucrezia Borgia – Out of Love to Arts”. The group played and sang baroque music from the late 15^th and early 16^th centuries.

I did not know the group beforehand, but I would like to express huge thanks to Vantaa BRQ and the Embassy of Spain for bringing these musicians to Finland.

It was clear even to a layman, that each member of the group (Elia Casanova, singer, Carles Magraner, viola de gamba, David Antich, flutes, Rosert Cases, vihuela and Pau Ballester, percussion) were true professionals. Their cooperation was seamless and the result enchanting.

The group performed three songs from the programme twice and especially during them it was possible to follow different musicians. It was extremely interesting to see the technical performance as well as well as how they put their soul into the pieces (even though they must have performed the same songs dozens of times) and I could have followed them for even more encores.

As a huge fan of vocal music I was, of course, especially interested in following Casanova, who used her voice masterfully as an instrument. She proficiently used diminuendos and fortes, moved from low notes to high notes. The programme gave an excellent opportunity to this, since the ambiance of the songs varied a lot. When the audience first was carried away by the cheery “El cervel mi fa Nocte i die”, a minute later they calmed down to listen to the almost pious “Senza te alta Regina” by composer Nicolò Patavino.

The performance of Capella de Ministres was excellent and we must hope that this will not be their last visit to Finland. There were plenty of free seats in the church, so there would have been room for even more listeners to this fine concert.