Avi Avital With The Venice Baroque Orchestra, Wigmore Hall, 22 December 2018

Why, in the name of all that is good and pure, did I subject us to yet another nightmarish journey to the Wigmore Hall just before Christmas?

Did I not learn my lesson three years ago from that Brad Mehldau concert of Bach music?

Clearly not. In my own defence, I thought that activity would have died down by the Saturday before Christmas. For us, work-wise, it had – but not for the shops and shoppers in neighbouring Oxford Street. Who knew?

In any case, I was very keen to see and hear this concert. Janie and I had very much enjoyed the Avital Meets Avital concert some eighteen months earlier:

So I was fascinated to see how Avi Avital got on with Baroque music and sort of glossed over the proximity to Christmas when I booked this Venice Baroque Orchestra concert.

Suffice it to say that the journey was suitably awful for Janie and me to agree, “never again at this time of year”…again. Yet, also again, the pain soon turned to pleasure when we listened to the music and watched the musicians.

The Wigmore Hall was full to the rafters for this one, which is always good to see. Here is the Wigmore Hall stub on this concert.

Mostly Vivaldi, but we got to hear some Geminiani (of the Corelli variety) and one piece by a later Neapolitan composer, Giovanni Paisiello. Avi told a fruity anecdote about the difference between Venetians and the hyper-romantic Neapolitans.

Avi Avital also told an amusing anecdote from his early childhood about falling in love with the Winter concerto from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, only to find out some years later that the piece he had actually fallen in love with was the Summer Concerto. Avi claims, it wasn’t until he went to Venice to work with the Venice Baroque Orchestra, that he actually experienced a violent summer thunder storm and realised why that stormy-sounding music represented summer rather than winter.

But the most interesting anecdote, which Avi told right at the end of the concert, was the fact that the concert very nearly didn’t happen at all. Most of the musicians were stranded as a result of the Gatwick Airport Drone Incident, which had required Avi’s team and the Wigmore Hall to work tirelessly rerouting musicians to enable the concert to go ahead. And we thought we’d had a stressful journey to that concert!

The orchestra are clearly seasoned exponents of this flavour of baroque music, although we felt that one or two members of the orchestra were not at their best that evening; perhaps travel or even life weary.

Avi Avital is an extraordinary, charismatic virtuoso of his instrument – his quality shines through all he plays. Yet, Janie and I both felt, some of the pieces that have been transposed from violin virtuoso pieces lose some of their musical quality through the transposition. Not for want of fine playing, but simply because the mandolin is a more limited, metal-stringed instrument. I enjoyed the change in some of the transposed pieces, but really missed the violin’s colour on others.

Below is a YouTube of a lovely, similar performance from a concert in Seoul a few week’s earlier:

‘Opus 5!’ – A Corelli Celebration, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Wigmore Hall, 8 June 2013

This was an excellent concert. Janie and I are both partial to the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and are also partial to a bit of Corelli. So we weren’t going to miss out on this one.

The concert was actually Corelli plus – it also highlighted some composers directly influenced by the great man.

The Wigmore Hall Programme page – click here – explains.

Below is a YouTube of the Alte Musik Berlin mob playing one of the Platti concerti we heard…

…followed by a real treat – the Corelli Op 5 No 10 (recorder concerto) shown live from the concert the night before ours, at the Kablow Dorfkirche – absolutely dreamy:

Kablow Dorfkirche KW
Kablow Dorfkirche

Mr Corelli In London, The English Concert & Maurice Steger, Wigmore Hall, 4 April 2011

What a beautiful concert this was.

I love a bit of Corelli under almost any circumstances, but these adaptations of Op 5 concertos for the recorder have an especially soulful and melancholy  timbre.

In the absence of Janie, I snapped up one of the CDs during the interval, as I was so sure she’d love the sound, which she did. We still both listen to this recording rather a lot. Indeed we are listening to it as I type.

Also available as a download now, from Amazon (click the pic) or elsewhere

It isn’t all that often that book to go to the Wigmore Hall on my own. But I really liked the look of this concert and Janie really didn’t fancy a special trip into town on a Monday evening, even for the Wigmore Hall. She was, at that time, normally still working long Monday clinics at her place.

The diary suggests I had worked a long day myself that day, ending up at Lord’s late afternoon, perhaps for a meeting about the Middlesex business plan. I’ll guess that it was the day of the AGM and that I therefore skived the Middlesex AGM that year for this concert.

What dedication to the early music cause and oh boy was it worth it.

The little available on-line about this concert and project can be found through the search term linked here.

The upshot of Janie missing out on this one was probably, in the longer term, good news. Since then, if I say that I shall nevertheless go alone to a concert that I really fancy, Janie usually then relents and agrees to come with me.