A very different style tonight. A rare chance to see Jordi Savall up close playing small scale music, along with Andrew Lawrence-King (he of the Loqueville that captivated me so many years ago).
Not all early music, of course, but some well early and some traditional of no fixed provenance; neither composer nor time period. Some lovely. All interesting.
Here is a link to the Wigmore Hall programme page for the evening.
Below is a YouTube with some music very much along the lines of the music we heard that night…
…and here is the very trio we saw, a few months later, performing live at the Fira Mediterrània de Manresa:
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.
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:
In the four years inbetween, Esfahani had become a real name in the early music world and here was an opportunity for us to see a recital of interesting stuff at very close quarters.
All Byrd in the first half – absolutely enchanting. The second half captivated us a little less – mostly familiar material from Bach’s Musical Offering (played beautifully) – we didn’t really see how the Ligeti fitted in with the Byrd and Bach. We love Hungarian folk music; the style just didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the programme, which was so relaxing. But that’s just us.
I don’t often get invited to high-falutin’ functions. Indeed, I wasn’t originally, personally invited to this one. But Michael Mainelli was invited and realised that the venue was just around the corner from my flat and would probably be music to my taste. Michael asked if his business partner might attend in his place, so I was graciously invited instead.
But I don’t think I am disclosing any Russian state secrets, nor am I likely to trigger the wrath of any bad guys, by reporting in glowing terms this absolutely splendid evening at the Russian Ambassador’s residence.
It is a beautiful building for a start, with charming reception rooms and an ideal large chamber for music of this kind – solo voices accompanied on the piano.
The drinks reception before the concert was relatively low key and brief. Ideal in a way, as I suspect that many of the diverse guests, like me, knew few other people present, so it was much easier to socialise after the concert, once we had a topic of shared experience to discuss.
As it happens I did see a couple of people I knew; one couple I had met through cousins Angela and John at the LPO (another, relatively recent, high-falutin’ experience) – click here or below:
I also had a brief chat before the concert with one of Michael Mainelli’s colleagues from the City of London Corporation crowd.
Then the concert:
A very high quality of performance from the young performers, as you might expect. All bright young stars.
After the concert, the performers circulated with the guests – I enjoyed chatting with a couple of them who, as is often the case with music people, had superb English and sparkling personalities.
I met the Greek Ambassador and his wife, with whom I had a very interesting chat for quite some time, not least about economics, Greece and the economics of Greece.
The food was excellent – Russian-style grub to the very highest quality. Much of it finger food, but also fishes, meats and salads. Lovely wines – with vodkas on offer for brave folk (not I).
I thought I should make my exit before I started to get ideas above my station and spotted my opportunity to thank the Russian Ambassador in person, so made my retreat at that moment. I told the Ambassador that we were neighbours while thanking him – he told me that I should pop round again.
I had a truly Pooteresque moment a couple of days later when planning my thank you note, when I realised that. although I could get away with a simple “your excellency” when addressing the Ambassador in person to say goodbye, I needed to do a more through piece of research to write him a thank you note addressed correctly…
…confusingly difficult these days because there are now fully formal and less than fully formal written modes of address to choose from.
Hi Alex…you said pop round any time…so how’s about next Thursday?I think I went for “full monty” formal style of response in the end, just to be sure. I wouldn’t want to upset anyone – especially once they know where I live.
Joking apart, it had been a very unusual and enjoyable evening for me – very memorable.
You don’t get to hear Telemann’s Tafelmusik in the concert hall all that often, although we had seen The Academy For Ancient Music perform some, also at The Wig, only six months earlier – click here or below:
The attraction of this Florilegium concert was partly the Tafelmusik (we were to hear some highlights from Part One whereas we’d heard Part Two last time…
It was a very enjoyable concert. Florilegium are always top notch – or rather they always have been when we’ve seen them.
The Easter Oratorio is a super choice for Florilegium, with their core strength being woodwind. I recall they also drummed up some fairly splendid trumpets for the occasion too. The singing soloists had beautiful voices.
Below is a vid of the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists under John Elliot Gardiner performing the piece. Larger scale, but a lovely vid and it will certainly give you an idea:
I remember Janie remarking that the concert was just what the doctor should have ordered…
…at that stage of Janie’s “resurrection” that was a multi-layered joke, together with being a truthful reflection on what a tonic the concert had been.
I thought SJSS would be a magnificent setting to hear the piece live – after all that is where my lovely recording of the piece had been recorded. I was right.
In the first half, we heard the Schubert Mass in G, which I enjoyed more than Janie did, although she quite liked it. It was followed by a world premier of a JohnMcCabe piece named Psalm-Cantata, which frankly did little for either of us.
But we did both really enjoy the Magnificat.
Below is a video of Nikolaus Harnoncourt with an unidentified choir and orchestra playing the Magnificat magnificently:
This was the start of Joshua Redman’s tenure as curator of Wigmore Hall’s jazz.
I recall that we were very excited about seeing this one and yet a little disappointed with the concert in the end. We love the sound of sax, but there was something about four saxophones and nothing else that lacked colour for this jazz, to us anyway.
You don’t have to be a Telemaniac (nor a Beliber) to have enjoyed this concert …but it helps.
We absolutely loved it, but then we are lovers of Baroque music by the likes of Telemann and Biber.
Further, we were treated to some early Baroque by Schein and Simpson, to whet our appetites and to show us how table music emerged as a genre in the 17th century.
Below is a short vid that shows the AAM under Richard Egarr rehearsing a Telemann concerto – one of my favourites as it happens:
Below is a nice selection of Telemann Tafelmusik – but not by AAM:
Finally, for those unfamiliar with Thomas Simpson (as we were) who would like to hear a small sample – below a little woodwind sampler, provenance unknown beyond the YouTube details provided:
We treated the Mainelli family to this concert. Xenia was learning the harp at school at that time.
In any case, it looked like a lovely concert, which indeed it was.
Here is a link to the Wigmore Hall resource for this concert. For some reason the on-line resource says that the first piece was a Handel arrangement – I’m pretty sure it was the Concerto in D minor by Allesandro Marcello, as stated in the programme.
We met and ate in the Wigmore Hall restaurant before the performance – I think possibly taking desert/coffee/drinks at our table during the interval as well.
To get a feel for what this concert sounded like, here is a video of Xavier de Maistre performing Recuerdos de la Alhambra, by Francisco Tárrega, which I recall was a bit of a highlight at our concert.
I think everyone in our party had a jolly good time – the eating, drinking, chatting and of course the music.
