ACO unveils its third Strad in a concert dedicated to the Bachs

The Australian Chamber Orchestra has unveiled its third Stradivarius in a concert featuring principal violin Helena Rathbone.

Helena Rathbone plays the Stradivarius in the ACO’s Bach concert. Picture: Julian Kingma

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The Australian Chamber Orchestra has unveiled its third Stradivarius in a concert featuring principal violin Helena Rathbone performing JS Bach’s double violin concerto with artistic director Richard Tognetti.

The 1732 ex-Dollfus has been loaned to the orchestra by an anonymous benefactor and joins an impressive collection of rare and valuable instruments including two other Strads, played by principal Satu Vanska and Mark Ingwersen, and the $10 million Guarneri del Gesu Carrodus violin played by Tognetti.

The performance of the double concerto was one of the highlights of the ACO’s latest tour featuring music by the Bach family and showcasing one of Australia’s top mezzosopranos, Anna Dowsley, as well as soloists from the orchestra.

The program included works by other Bachs rarely heard in a concert hall – JS’s third cousin, uncle and great uncle among them - as well diverse works by two other composers who used Bach’s musical signature in German notation – B-flat, A, C, B-natural – German Romantic Robert Schumann and contemporary Russian Sofia Gubaidulina.

Johann Ludwig’s overture from the Suite in G major made for a stately and lively start. The Bach family’s annual get-togethers were by all account excuses for lively, sometimes raucous, music making and this work, as well as the Sonata that followed by JS’s great uncle Heinrich, would have featured.

The ACO, stripped back to 10 string players, bassoonist Jane Gower and keyboardist Erin Helyard, were in top form. Rathbone and Tognetti combined superbly for the glorious JS Bach masterpiece concerto and Timo-Veikko Valve took no prisoners in his account of Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach’s virtuosic Cello Concerto in A major.

Anna Dowsley performing with the ACO in the Bach concert. Picture: Julian Kingma

CPE’s brother Johann Christian – the so-called “London Bach” – inspired Mozart when he visited England and the younger composer used one of his works as the model for the second movement of his Piano Concerto No 12, played impeccably by Helyard on a fortepiano.

Dowsley was luminous in the aria from JS Bach’s cantata Ich habe genug, and delightful in his uncle’s Ciacona about a young couple looking for a spot to indulge their love.

The concert will be repeated at the City Recital Hall on Tuesday, June 28, at 8pm and Wednesday, June 29, at 7pm.

DETAILS

• CONCERT ACO Bach

• WHERE City Recital Hall

• WHEN June 27