Sinead Blanchfield (soprano), London Baroque Sinfonia/Laurence Cummings

In tandem with Opera Theatre Company's current tour of Handel's Rodelinda, the period-instrument players of the London Baroque…

In tandem with Opera Theatre Company's current tour of Handel's Rodelinda, the period-instrument players of the London Baroque Sinfonia have been on a tour of their own, which reached Christ Church Cathedral on Wednesday night.

The opening item, the first Concerto from Handel's Op 6, was a painful experience, with an extraordinary level of unpalatable intonational misalignment.

If this was due to the instruments not being in tune together at the start, the piece should surely have been stopped for retuning and a restart.

The orchestral playing did settle, but neither of the soloists in the two concertos - Mark Radcliffe in the Bach Oboe d'amore Concerto in A (reconstructed from the Harpsichord Concerto BWV1055) and Caroline Kershaw in Sammartini's Descant Recorder Concerto in F - communicated with really decisive, pointed musicianship.

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The greatest burden of solo work was taken by Irish soprano Sinead Blanchfield, who made a very favourable impression in early appearances with OTC, and who has since completed post-graduate studies in Manchester.

She sings with pleasing presence and ease, and in the two arias from Rodelinda sounded more persuasive in the calmness of "Ritorna, o caro" than in the fiery animation of "Morrai si". Hers is a voice full of promise, easy of extension at the top and mostly well controlled when faced with demands of agility.

At the moment, her fast vibrato is rather too undifferentiated in its presence, and with a sort of ingenue freshness as a basic mode, she didn't show the expressive range to sustain Handel's demandingly substantial Silete venti.

But she certainly gave the impression that the vocal resources will be there when she gets around to marshalling them to a higher purpose.

Michael Dervan

Michael Dervan

Michael Dervan is a music critic and Irish Times contributor