Brandenburgs gain by last minute change
A LAST minute cancellation allowed Paul Dyer and the Australian Brandenburgs to change a negative to a positive with their latest tour.
Wentworth Courier
Don't miss out on the headlines from Wentworth Courier. Followed categories will be added to My News.
- Home-spun words from Wenham
- SSO’s Brahms feast ends in festive blaze
- The man with the golden Strad
- Fiddler Ray casts a wide net
AUSTRALIAN Brandenburg artistic director Paul Dyer must have an impressive contacts list of top-notch Baroque violinists for when the talented Stefano Montanari, branded the Burning Violin, dropped out a few months back the 2018 season had been announced and the brochure and media releases had gone to print.
Enter Spanish guest director Daniel Pinteno. The concert was hastily rebranded Mediterraneo and, judging from the first night of the tour, audiences lost nothing in this smooth transition.
In fact there was plenty to gain, for not only were we treated to some popular and much-treasured Vivaldi works, but we were introduced to unfamiliar Spanish composers, alongside some Italians who either had a direct connection with the Iberian Peninsula or wielded a musical influence it.
A delightful find is Felix Maximo Lopez, who was fourth organist at royal chapel in Madrid and had to wait 40 years for the other three to drop off the perch before becoming head honcho in 1805.
His portrait was painted by Goya and hangs in the Prado.
PIZZAZZ
His overtura con tutti instrumenti, which closed the first half of the program, is an early classical three-movement symphony with horns and oboes lending a military (or maybe a hunting) air to the breezy outer movements. But the third movement is the most interesting. It starts as a string quartet before the orchestra joins in and it incorporates a minuet, more often heard as a middle movement.
Pinteno led with pizzazz and a sense of fun, his violin playing seemed effortless, producing a sweet tone which soared over the tight ensemble work of the Brandies.
Short and sweet is an apt description of Vicente Basset’s overture which started the evening. So little is known about this musician — not even his nationality, but he played violin in Madrid orchestras at the time the great Italian castrato Farinelli was performing for King Philip V.
Vivaldi’s influence on Baroque composers from all nations cannot be over-estimated — J.S. Bach learnt about concerto construction from his scores — and the two works performed by Pinteno and the ABO were among the pick of the 500-plus he wrote before he died in poverty in Vienna.
Melissa Farrow was faultless in the La Notte flute concerto which features mysterious slow passages with long held trills and notes and some “ghost” music. Vivaldi also recycles the sleep episode from Autumn from the Four Seasons.
WASPISH
Pinteno showed his mettle in the second half with the concerto in D major from L’estro Armonico, Op 3 No. 9, with some admirable backing throughout the evening from concertmaster Shaun Lee-Chen and section leader Ben Dollman.
The 18th century English organist, critic and composer Charles Avison was no great fan of Vivaldi, waspishly dismissing his music as “of the lowest class … only a fit amusement for children”. He was equally scathing about Handel, saying that both composers were too ornate and lacking in subtlety.
History may have proved him wrong but he could write a rattling good tune and his furious second movement from his Concerto grosso after Scarlatti brought one of the loudest cheers from the audience.
Pinteno studied musicology, unearthing several musical treasures from churches and museums in his home country, and it was another fascinating rarity which closed this concert — a concerto by Gaetano Brunetti, an Italian who spent his professional life as a musician in the Spanish court.
His Sinfonia Il Maniatico is meant to describe “the fixation of a delirious person” — here represented by the cello of Jamie Hey — who constantly repeats a two-note interval throughout the work despite the best efforts of his musical colleagues to “cheer him up”.
Occasionally he joins them, but then suffers a relapse until they finally hit on a tune that breaks the fixation.
All nicely done and it only remained for Pinteno to return to the stage and lead Dyer at the harpsichord and the ABO in the foot stomping Fandango by Antonio Soler.
The concert is repeated at 7pm at City Recital Hall Angel Place on Friday, September 7; Saturday, September 8; Wednesday, September 12, and Friday, September 14, with a 2pm matinee on Saturday, September 8.
DETAILS
● CONCERT: Mediterraneo: Australian Brandenburg Orchestra with Daniel Pinteno
● WHERE: City Recital Hall Angel Place
● WHEN: Wednesday, September 5