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St Martin-in-the-Fields, LondonThe Christmas oratorio about the holy family’s flight into Egypt was beautifully performed by John Eliot Gardiner’s Monteverdi Choir and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and a top-flight cast of soloistsA stone’s throw from the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, in the National Gallery, you can see what the old Flemish painters made of the story of the holy family’s flight into Egypt, Here, with John Eliot Gardiner’s Monteverdi Choir and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique giving their first concert in their new home venue, you could hear Berlioz’s take on it. The forces had already performed it in Zurich and in Ely Cathedral, and have a single date in Barcelona this week, which presumably counts as a European tour post-Brexit.L’Enfance du Christ is full of Berlioz’s characteristic mood swings and grand, colourful gestures: it’s an oratorio that sounds as though it desperately wants to be an opera, perfect for the characterful period winds and brass of Gardiner’s orchestra and for the top-flight cast of soloists he had assembled here. Michael Spyres’s glowing Narrator, Ann Hallenberg’s beatific Mary and Lionel Lhote’s desperate yet noble Joseph – it would have been good to hear more of all three, but Berlioz doesn’t put the spotlight squarely on any one soloist. The smaller roles were taken by singers from the choir; Alexander Ashworth made especially vivid work of the Ishmaelite who takes the family in. Continue reading...