We love the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin. We first saw them at The Wig many years ago and have seen them a good few times since, both in London and in Berlin.
We hadn’t seen this orchestra for a while, though, so we thought we’d see if we could get hot seats for this concert. We could.
In truth I was not familiar with the Handel Op. 3 Concerti Grossi; I don’t think they get all that much of an airing, being seen as somewhat composite or compilation works.
But in the hands of fine performers, such music is sheer delight, as demonstrated by this concert.
Here is a link to the Wigmore Hall resource on the concert.
This was our third visit to The Wig in just over a fortnight. In truth, I didn’t think we’d get our preferred seats for all of them but we did. NOT a complaint.
I was reminded of both of our other recent visits for a couple of silly reasons.
Our most recent visit had been The Orlando Consort singing 14th and 15th Century music:
The in joke from that concert was that almost everyone involved with composing that 14th and 15th century English stuff was named John.
It occurred to me that a similar naming commonality could be applied to this baroque period, with the composers, the Hanoverian English kings and this evening’s conductor all named Georg/George.
The other recent visit was to see a Samuel Pepys themed concert performed by The Sixteen…
…at which we were joined by Robin Simpson, experiencing The Wig and such music for the first time. At 91 going on 92, Robin demonstrated his remarkable observational skills when he remarked, the next time I saw him, that two recorder players were listed for The Sixteen at that Pepy’s concert, but there was no sign of either of them on the night.
I couldn’t explain their absence – perhaps some passing reader can. I guessed that there was a late decision to omit the recorders, perhaps due to the indisposition of one of the performers or perhaps, on Harry Christopher’s reflection, for artistic reasons.
Anyway, returning to the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin concert, once again there were two recorder players listed, but, come the interval, there had been no sign of recorders.
What on earth is going on in the world of baroque recorder players, I wondered. Is there some sort of censorship going on, whereby recorder players are being prevented from expressing themselves? Are the recorder players being kidnapped, imprisoned or worse?
The answer, at least in the matter of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin concert, came towards the end of the evening, when Anna Fusek put down her violin and picked up a recorder, which she played (beautifully, as did every player with every instrument that night) in the Soave from Telemann’s Canonic Sonata VI. Below is someone else’s recording of that sonata.
Below is a recording of Academy of St Martin In the Fields playing Handel’s Op 3 No 1 Concerto Grosso, by which time Michael Bosch had metaphorically bonked his oboe on the head and picked up a second recorder to join Anna. Recorder mystery fully solved.
If you haven’t seen the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin before…or even if you have…the following video should be a treat for you. They are playing Handel’s Water Music, under Georg Kallweit, who also led the orchestra at the 4 May 2019 concert.
They really are a top notch orchestra. Janie and I feel lucky and privileged to have seen them several times. This Handel/Telemann concert, while not the most exciting programme we have heard them play, was just the ticket for us at the end of a day of (similarly baroque) sporting activity.