Cellist Elinor Frey and the Brandies set off fireworks with a light fandango

Exciting young cellist Elinor Frey makes her Sydney debut while the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra skip a light fandango.

Canadian-American cellist Elinor Frey makes her Australian debut sperforming with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra. Picture: Keith Saunders

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Canadian-American cellist Elinor Frey, making her Australian debut with the opening tour of 2023 with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, has an impressive collection of cellos, viols and gambas.

But paradoxically she chooses modern period instruments over older ones, with her favourite four-string Baroque cello being made in America as recently as 2017.

This is in stark contrast to the historically informed performance ensembles she plays with, many of whom like to boast about the impressive centuries-old provenance of their instruments.

The cello in question was used for her stunning performance of Luigi Boccherini’s Cello Concerto No. 9 in B-flat major during the first half of this entertaining concert with a Spanish twist.

Boccherini, like Domenico Scarlatti before him, was born in Italy but spent most of his working life attached to the Spanish court, dying there in 1805.

His extraordinary Night music of the streets of Madrid made an arresting opening to this concert. The piece, originally for string quintet, gives a colourful and dramatic 18th century account of what you might hear outside your window – church bells, calls of beggars in the street, guitars (the cellists have to strum their instruments on its side) and the night militia dealing with rowdy partygoers before retreating for the curfew.

The Brandies were in cracking form for this opener which was given a dramatic visual twist by a rectangle of strip floor lights surrounding the players.

ABO artistic director Paul Dyer handed over the directing reins when Frey came on stage. The Boccherini concerto is a virtuosic work by a composer who was also the 18th century’s greatest cellist. Frey carried off the dizzying runs across the length of the fingerboard with consummate ease. There were plenty of technical pyrotechnics in the solo cadenzas and cello and orchestra combined smoothly for the charming melodies that are this composer’s trademark.

The other concerto on the program was by 18th century Milanese composer Giovanni Battista Sammartini, whose orchestra Boccherini played in as a young man. The work was originally composed for violin and Frey brought out a rare instrument from her collection, a three-quarter size piccolo cello which she bought recently and which, unlike its companions, does have a long history, having been built in Germany in 1770.

Tuned an octave below a violin, it is has a shorter fingerboard and is perfect for those flashy tricks you would expect from a fiddle.

The concerto is a stunner and it is surprising to see that this was first time it has been performed in Australia, although the ABO have previously performed other works of this composer, who was friend to both Mozarts, father and son.

Spanish dancer Yioda Wilson performing with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra. Picture: Keith Saunders

Spanish dancer Yioda Wilson joined the ABO for Boccherini’s most famous work, the Fandango from the Guitar Quintet No. 4, alternating between dancing with castanets and a fan, and the drama of the night reached a climax in the final Boccherini piece, The Devil’s House from his Symphony in D minor, modelled on Gluck’s famous finale to the ballet Don Juan, later cannibalised by Mozart for Don Giovanni’s fiery end in Hell.

The concert is repeated at City Recital Hall Angel Place on Saturday, February 25, at 2pm and 7pm, and at 7pm on Wednesday, March 8, and Friday, March 10.

DETAILS

• CONCERT Australian Brandenburg Orchestra: Spanish Steps

• WHERE City Recital Hall

• WHEN February 24, 2023