Tag: Antonio Vivaldi

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?

Brad Mehldau, Wigmore Hall, 17 December 2015

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:

Avital Meets Avital, Wigmore Hall Lates, 23 June 2017

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:

Per Sua Maestà Cesarea e Cattolica, La Serenissima, Wigmore Hall, 9 September 2018

I can’t really explain why this concert didn’t really float our boat – it just didn’t. Janie and I were both feeling unusually tired that early evening – both short of energy for venturing out. We had been enjoying following the cricket and tennis over the weekend, the latter until reasonably late I suppose, but that wouldn’t normally put us off.

La Serenissima is an unusually large troupe for the Wigmore Hall – there as a lot of juggling and jiggling to fit everyone on the stage, so it all felt a bit busy.

The chorus missed their cue to enter right at the start of the performance, which led to more jiggling for stage space after the orchestra had prepared themselves spatially and tuned their instruments.

The concert was all music from the Imperial Court of Charles VI

I wanted to hear Caldara live as I had never heard any before. I rather liked his arias, actually. Quite beautiful.

I was amused that the first set was from Ormisda, re di Persia, singing praise to the God Mithras, about whom I myself lauded a few months ago following a Gresham Society visit to the London Mithraeum:

The London Mithraeum With The Gresham Society, 15 March 2018

But I knew the Conti comic opera material would not please Janie – nor did it much please me. In truth, the whole concert was a bit busy and noisy for us that night.

Come the interval, when we realised that the only substantially different piece on the schedule was a Vivaldi concerto, lovely though the RV171 undoubtedly is, we decided to make an early exit.  Here is Europa Gallant’s delightful recording, with Fabio Biondi on the fiddle:

The following is La Serenissima playing Caldara, but a sinfonia, not an aria – beautiful it is, though:

…and finally here is a Caldara aria, performed by Concerto Köln under Emmanuelle Haïm with the superb Philippe Jaroussky singing the aria.

Kremer Verses Kremerata: More Than Four Seasons At The Proms, 4 September 1999

Another quirky and memorable concert at The Proms. We took The Duchess Of Castlebar (Janie’s mum) with us to this one, as we thought she would like the Piazzolla. Possibly she did. You didn’t tend to get positive feedback from the Duchess back then and nothing has changed in 25 years, as I write in 2024.

Janie and I were fascinated by this concert. Janie was already keen on Piazzolla and this helped cement that interest.

Here’s what we heard:

  • Giya Kancheli – V & V
  • Arvo Pärt – Tabula rasa
  • Antonio Vivaldi – The Four Seasons, No. 1 in E Major, RV 269
  • Astor Piazzoll – Cuatro estaciones porteñas,  Verano porteño
  • Antonio Vivaldi – The Four Seasons, No. 2 in G minor, RV 315
  • Astor Piazzolla – Cuatro estaciones porteñas, Otoño porteño
  • Antonio Vivaldi – The Four Seasons, No. 3 in F Major, RV 293
  • Astor Piazzolla – Cuatro estaciones porteñas, Invierno porteño
  • Antonio Vivaldi – The Four Seasons, No. 4 in F minor, RV 297
  • Astor Piazzolla – Cuatro estaciones porteñas, Primavera porteña
  • Peter Heidrich – Variations on ‘Happy Birthday’
  • Alexander Bakshi – The Unanswered Call

Fiona Maddocks briefly wrote up the concert in The Observer:

Kremer Observer MaddocksKremer Observer Maddocks 12 Sep 1999, Sun The Observer (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Here’s what the Arvo Pärt piece sounds like:

While here is the sound of the Piazzolla piece we heard interspersed between the oh so familiar Four Seasons:

We took the Duchess to North China after the concert. The restaurant West Acton, not the more northerly reaches of the Middle Kingdom…obvs.

A Late Night Prom With The Scholl Siblings & The Frieburg Baroque, 27 August 1999

This was a super way to kick off a bank holiday weekend. Janie and I had taken the day off work. No sign in the diaries of us eating out – perhaps we ate at Sandall Close and then jumped in the car to go to Kensington.

Interesting concert – Janie is partial to a bit of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, so that would have been the clincher. The other three pieces were rare items, all of which were getting their Proms premier that night.

  • Francesco Durante – Concerto No. 4 in E minor
  • Antonio Vivaldi – Filiae maestae Jerusalem, RV 638
  • Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer – Concerto No. 5 in F minor
  • Giovanni Battista Pergolesi – Stabat mater

Here’s a beautiful recording of Andreas Scholl singing the Vivaldi piece (with a different orchestra), embedded from Andreas Scholl’s YouTube Channel:

I cannot find a review of the concert we heard, but I can find a most interesting preview in The Telegraph, including an interview with the Scholl siblings:

Scholl x2 Telegraph Rye Scholl x2 Telegraph Rye 21 Aug 1999, Sat The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

As Andreas himself says, the Royal Albert Hall is far from perfect acoustically for baroque music, but it does have a unique atmosphere of its own. This concert was a good one.