THE OBSERVER

Residency at Spitalfields Music (14 Jan 2009)

A peal of bells, sounding above the sirens and traffic of east London's Commercial Street, ushered in the third of John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir's Bach concerts with the English Baroque Soloists, part of the Spitalfields Winter Music Festival which continues in January. When the series ends, so too will Gardiner's Bach Cantata Pilgrimage which began in Weimar on Christmas Day 1999 and now, despite the odds, has permanent existence in the form of covetable recordings.

Reflecting Bach's near mystical devotion to the number six, reckoned the most harmonious by Pythagoras, each concert comprised one of the six Brandenburg Concertos and one of the Christmas Oratorio's six cantatas, as well as a motet. Part III, ablaze with trumpets and drums, depicts the last windows in the Advent Calendar: the Adoration of the Shepherds and the baby in the manger.

With tenors almost dancing the alliterative Herrscher des Himmels (Ruler of Heaven) and the orchestra providing breathless gusto, the music explodes into life. The Evangelist, an ardent Nicholas Mulroy, narrates the Gospel story, with elaborating, contrasting solo arias, eloquently sung by Katharine Fuge, Clare Wilkinson and Matthew Brook. Each member of this choir, too, sings with impassioned commitment yet blends into the ensemble sound.

Fine instrumental soloists, including harpsichordist Matthew Halls, stupendous in the fast ride of the fifth Brandenburg, grinned in enjoyment as they took their bows. Period performers always tend to look happy, unlike their mainstream orchestral colleagues who can be a tad parsimonious with their smiles. A subject for another time.

Prefacing the concert with bells added to the festive mood. The ringers were the Society of Royal Cumberland Youths, which sounds like a remedial club for northern juveniles, but turns out to be one of London's most august bell-ringing societies, founded in the mid-18th century not long after the Christmas Oratorio was written and Hawksmoor's Christ Church, Spitalfields, built.

The peal was Stedman Triples. Who was Stedman? What were his Triples? According to a belfry insider, it's "the classic seven-bell method with the tenor ringing behind". It was discovered by Fabian Stedman in the 17th century as a way of "obtaining every possible change on seven bells once [mathematically calculated] and it is also very musical". Still with it? No good trawling campanology chatrooms. They do not yield their secrets freely. A comparison might be the minimalist phase shifting in, say, Steve Reich's Clapping Music, in which you eventually end up where you started.

But there's a serious point. This esoteric art is too readily taken for granted. As with priests and milkmen, there's a national shortage and even the Salvation Army, reliant on them at Christmas, has campaigned for recruits. Never mind ringing in the New Year, what about 2012? Your country needs you. Anyone can do it. It's allegedly a good workout for brain and body, safer - bar clangers - than online dating or jogging, and free.

Fiona Maddox

www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/dec/28/classical-reviews-music-bach