Auckland Arts Festival: Going for baroque

Supersize images will set the scene for Tafelmusik.

Canadian orchestra Tafelmusik's 17 players bring music set against a backdrop of five historic houses. William Dart reports.

You know a festival is on its way when an international orchestra is coming to town and, sure enough, a March concert by Tafelmusik, a Canadian baroque orchestra, promises to be a highlight of this year's Auckland Arts Festival.

The 17 players will bring Bach, Handel and Vivaldi in a programme titled House of Dreams, presented with a multi-media twist, thanks to Alison Mackay.

Mackay also plays bass with the group and speaks wistfully of her early days with Tafelmusik, 35 years ago. "It started with a real attachment to the repertoire itself. At the beginning it all seemed very cutting-edge and experimental. You felt as if you were really doing something out of the mainstream and we've tried to hold on to the fresh approach we had back then."

Although baroque is still the orchestra's core repertoire, the players have been coaxed into extending the playlist to include Mozart and Haydn. Tafelmusik has just completed a successful Beethoven season under Kent Nagano, back in Toronto. "I remember playing my first Haydn symphony," Mackay says. "It seemed such a leap from what we'd become accustomed to. It was almost like being a musician of the time, who'd been playing Bach all his career, and then being introduced to this new classical style."

Tafelmusik has made its name through innovative presentations that, in Mackay's words, "put the music into the context of words and images that people who are not necessarily music-lovers know or are curious about".

She cites The Galileo Project: Music of the Spheres which she created for the ensemble, and which won a 2012 Helpmann Award after an Australian tour. "We made some wonderful connections with astronomical societies around the world," Mackay says. "Often astronomers brought their telescopes to the concerts so the audience could go outside and look at the night sky afterwards, just as Galileo did."

The inspiration for House of Dreams came from Tafelmusik's many European tours, where "it was always a privilege to play in venues for which the music was sometimes written".

In two hours, without leaving Auckland Town Hall, we will "visit" five historic houses and hear appropriate music. Images of the houses and their art will be projected on a 5m-high screen, surrounded by "a gorgeous gilt frame that's a replica of one from the Venetian palazzo owned by Joseph Smith".

The palazzo is one of the featured houses, and Mackay points out how the Englishman Smith was a real character who "made a fortune from exporting art and wine back to England as well as dried fruit for Christmas puddings. The whole evening is just as if you're a guest in one of these houses, sitting in a room and experiencing Handel or Vivaldi conducting a performance while you're looking at Rembrandts and Watteaus."

Mackay singles out one building in the Dutch city of Delft, originally owned by a "bookseller, so poor he had to borrow money to bury his young wife. Yet he owned 23 of Vermeer's 35 known paintings, which were hanging around his house."

The building is now a pancake restaurant, "but we have been able to put those paintings back in the rooms, as they once were".

Music stands and scores have been banished for this presentation. "The audience can feel the natural movement of the musicians without the barrier of music stands," Mackay says. "Musicians can play their parts at any spot of the stage that seems right. This means the audience can feel what it is like to be surrounded by an orchestra, or to have the music director standing beside you in the aisle."

Auckland Arts Festival

What:

Tafelmusik: House of Dreams

Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, March 6 at 8pm

Supersize images will set the scene for Tafelmusik.