There were two London Festival of Baroque Music concerts at St John’s Smith Square that evening and we really liked the look of both of them.
So that’s what we did – we went and looked at them both.
Versailles: The Improbable Dream
The first was Fuoco E Cenere – all music pertaining to Louis XIV and Versailles.
Here is the SJSS card for this concert.
This ensemble was recently involved in a French TV series about Versailles – said to be the most expensive ever made in France – here is a short musical extract from the TV programme:
Mercifully for the down to earth SJSS audience, Fuoco E Cenere did not ponce about in 17th Century wigs and outfits for our concert.
Here is a more down to earth vid and interview about Les Folies d’Espagne by Marais, which they did play on the night:
The highlight of this concert, for us, was the singing of the young guest soprano, Theodora Raftis. She has an outstanding voice and tremendous stage presence. She seemed a little overwhelmed by the occasion at first, but it was great to see her warm to her work and become the highlight of the show by the end of the concert. She was clearly well appreciated by the audience and her fellow performers. Remember the name: Theodora Raftis. Not much of her to be found on-line, but here is some Donizetti – trust us, she’s upped her game big time since this vid was recorded:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sszddZG0cEQ
The Platters
No , we didn’t see a 1950s vocal group, but we did eat charcuterie and cheese platters with salad and a glass of wine between the concerts. I won’t dwell on the shenanigans involved in booking a table and arranging the platters – let’s just celebrate the fact that waiters David and Ramon did us proud and that we thoroughly enjoyed our twixt concert supper.
Paris-Madras
It was this second concert that really inspired me to book the evening – the notion of a fusion of French Baroque and Indian raga music. How on earth might that work? Well, it pretty much did.
Here is a link to the SJSS resource for this concert.
Le Concert De L’Hostel-Dieu provided the baroque element. In truth, we got more out of the ragas than we got out of the Leçons de Ténèbres. The wonderful weather of the previous week had turned to miserable cold weather that day, so neither of us was much in the mood for the lamentations of Jeremiah. More seriously, we’d seen the Leçons de Ténèbres quite recently and didn’t realise that the concert would pretty much give us the whole lot un-fused with the ragas…plus ragas unfused with the lamentations.
On the ragas, in particular, we liked the bansuri flute and the sarod. Soumik Datta, the sarod virtuoso involved, is far more rock’n’roll than the rest of the performers on show that night. Here is his showreel:
Below is the explanatory vid in French about the Paris-Madras project, in which you can hear Ravi Prasad sing and Patrick Rudant play his flute, as well as the baroque players of course:
The absolute highlight of this concert for us was the few passages when the musicians segued between the two styles and the ending when they all played together. Perhaps they judged the fusion to be risky, so they minimised its use, but to our mind it was a risk that came off big time and the fusion was the reason we went to see the concert.
Anyway, we came out the other side of the evening feeling very pleased with the whole occasion.