Concert
European Union Baroque Orchestra
Manoel Theatre
If this were to be considered a preview of the baroque delights to come, the Manoel has certainly done well with this very-well-attended concert.
The orchestra is one made up of strings and includes the now obsolete theorbo and baroque guitar, with two harpsichords rather than one
Music coeval with the Manoel provided a perfect venue for performance by the young members of the EUBO under the experienced direction of Italian violinist-conductor Riccardo Minasi. His 17-strong team of musicians come from nine countries and play in this orchestra for just a year, during which they become a very well-knit and cohesive entity.
No doubt Minasi’s energy and enthusiasm are infectious and reach out and engulf the performers, who show equally obvious delight in music-making. Inevitably this reached the audience, thus creating a marvellous all-round rapport.
Minasi is a good communicator too, and his quips in between works lightened potentially boring but necessary breaks during retuning of some instruments.
The orchestra is one made up of strings and includes the now obsolete theorbo and baroque guitar, with two harpsichords rather than one. All the music performed was by Italian composers, contemporaries of the greatest of them, Arcangelo Corelli.
Five out of seven works were concerti grossi, a form perfected by Corelli of whose works in this form only one was performed, the one in B flat, Opus 6, No. 11.
The works presented displayed not only the basic differences between a concerto grosso and a concerto for one or more instruments, but also variety within the same form. This puts paid to superficial dismissal of such music as being simply repetitive.
The Corelli was the only work here distinguished by a very dominant role for the cello, not to mention the almost frenetic allemande which contrasted so well with the two slow movements flanking it.
Pietro Castrucci’s Concerto Grosso in D, Opus 3, No.12 was crowned with an enchanting finale – andantino con eco with an offstage violin providing the echo effect. Mossi’s three-movement Concerto Grosso in E minor, Opus 4, No. 12 was one of the best performed works (one thought) until Montanari’s in A came along with a particularly interesting grave movement with some very beautiful passages preceding the concluding vivace performed with abundant zest.
The truth is that this was no search for the best performed work. They were all performed in a highly-accomplished manner. Valentini’s Concerto in A minor for four violins, viola and cello concertante, Opus 7, No. 11 was a complex but rewarding exercise for performers and audience. Claudia Norz, Jacek Kurzydło, Dominika Fehér and Anna Curzon (violins), Ricardo Cuende Isuskiza (viola) and Petr Hamouz (cello) had a jolly good time performing in crisply-phrased interplay with verve and ensemble support that never flagged.
Mro Minasi and Kinga Ujszászi gave an all-round fine performance of Visconti’s B flat Concerto for Two Violins. The concluding work was Geminiani’s Concerto Grosso in B flat, Opus 3 No. 12. This consists of just the theme La folia d’España, an exciting musical graph charting various tempi, key changes and ever-interesting shifts of mood. An audience unwilling to leave the theatre was placated with two encores.
One was a bourée barely lasting a minute by Johann Ludwig Bach (1677-1731), second cousin to J.S. Bach. The other was the latter’s very last chorale, which owing to his blindness he dictated to his son Carl Philipp Emanuel.