Performance: Concertante!

Concert Chamber

Review: Tara Werner


Given the calibre of three previous International Chamber Music Festivals, expectations were high for this Sunday night programme, the opening concert in the series.

Sadly, the Aradia Baroque Orchestra under festival musical director Uwe Grodd was just not up to the mark, both in its presentation and attention to detail.

Baroque instruments are notoriously difficult to keep in tune but surely this was no excuse for the inability of these youthful visitors from Canada to stay accurately on the note.

And considering they are meant to be experts in early music performance, it seemed odd that they played works from the classical period, nearly a century later than their usual milieu.

They may be playing music more sympathetic to their cause for other concerts, but in this programme there was a strange clash of styles. Mozart, Haydn and Pleyel all sounded exposed, a little like the musical equivalent of the emperor without his clothes.

While the opening Sinfonia Concertante by Pleyel was of passing interest - apparently the first time this music has been performed in 200 years - it was clear why the score had sunk into oblivion, given its long-winded first movement.

Here, the inaccuracy of the soloists was almost embarrassing, with the cellist in particular looking very uncomfortable.

And Mozart's Violin Concerto No 5 only fared marginally better, violinist Kevin Mallon obviously having an off-night judging by the number of suspect notes.

Later, Hadyn's Sinfonia Concertante in B flat, modelled on the Pleyel, opened quite convincingly and then plunged into yet another lacklustre interpretation.

The only bright spot in an otherwise nondescript performance was Swedish soprano Maria Keohane's lovely voice, one that combined purity of tone with vocal agility and strength.

Her two Mozart arias underlined her lyricism, especially the famous upward sweeping phrases that opened Ruhe sanft mein holdes leben Compared with the quality of previous festivals, this concert was a disappointing dud.