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I saw Corelli today…

yes! conducting his big orchestra. Distorted face, looking like he is dying on stage, rolling eyes, jumping, making everybody move … as he moves, breathe … as he breathes, jump … as he blinks, cry … as he raises his eyebrow… and does magic with his bow. He goes by the name of Enrico Onofri these days. His orchestra today was called the European Union Baroque Orchestra: a bunch of very talented young musicians, enjoying playing together, playing with the Master, feeling privileged because they got to do so; moving everyone. A great program, the big star was Geminiani’s Follia, also played as the second (yes!) encore. A mostly Italian program, it nevertheless included a deliciously French-sounding Muffat Sonata (from Armonico Tributo); well, French-sounding most of the time, except for that bit near the end of the breathtaking Chaconne (it seems it is called Passagaglia, but as everyone knows …) where they went all Italian, making it sound like a completely (and disconcertingly!) different piece. What else can I say? Absolute mastery of pretty much everything: bow, left hand, expression, imagination, baroque experimentation… in a word (or two): “pure” Baroque.

Not a bit less good was yesterday’s concert, where Onofri conducted the Imaginarium Ensemble, seconded by the also amazing Alessandro Tampieri — a genius of the violin, the lute and the viola, who plays like an angel (or perhaps like a devil?) and looks like this mischievous kid who’s just been caught and is putting his best disconcerted face. A very comprehensive program of Italian Baroque from Cima to Vivaldi, two astonishing virtuosi having fun on stage playing together, two good friends enjoying playing (and dancing!) together. All passion, (ok, and technique, if somewhat “unorthodox”, from the way they hold the violin to their bowings, to … ), all “mezzo-niente”. Both very BIG (as virtuosi and also as in Big Italian Gestures ;-). A very well chosen and beautifully played “finale”, Vivaldi’s Follia, made a usually shy British audience roar and shout “bravos” and “encores”; it made me feel like I was, well … levitating (while dancing it, that is!). Giles said I looked like I was going to go backstage and hug someone — and I guess I could have done, if I hadn’t been made aware of it ;-)

The end of this year’s Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music (Top Marks for this edition!), and The Best of The Best.

Posted 23 May 2010 † Lola § Events § Our music ‡ Comments (0) °

Dancing Bach

After the great concert by Hantaï last Sunday, I couldn’t help ordering some of his CDs… Besides his Scarlatti Sonatas and Bach’s Le Clavier bien tempéré and Goldberg variations (all heaven!), I got his version of the Bach Suites 1 & 4 (with him conducting Le Concert Français): a masterpiece, and hard to refrain from actually *dancing* them.

Posted 20 May 2010 † Lola § Recorded music ‡ Comments (0) °

More Lufthansa Festival: The afternoon concerts “chronicle”

As a Madrilian, I heard a lot of Scarlatti music when I was living in my home town. Unfortunately most of it badly played (lots of it on the piano), sounding bland, dull, and cheesy. That put me off Scarlatti for a very long time. Pretty much until today. I am deeply grateful to Pierre Hantaï for completely changing my idea of Scarlatti’s music this afternoon. I had no idea such intensity and color was possible in Scarlatti’s music, or in harpsichord music indeed (normally I am not a big fan of it). Bravo, maestro!

Another big surprise was yesterday’s afternoon concert (mostly 17th Century Italian music “in stil moderno”) by Baroque Fever. The name of the band, their photo, and the description on the Lufthansa Festival brochure made it a good candidate for a concert that could be missed. The more detailed description on the program made me change my mind, and I am really glad I did. It was a true (and high quality) “Baroque jam session” from beginning to end: the way the musicians introduced themselves, how they interacted among themselves and with the audience, how they supported the others as well as each of them having had their “moment of glory” (i.e. solo), how 1st and 2nd violin swapped places halfway through the concert (I had *never* seen that before!). They made us share their music, their joy, the emotion. I couldn’t help thinking that’s how music “in stil moderno” might have been played back then. It also confirmed once more how close Baroque and Jazz music seem to be, how many things they share.

Posted 16 May 2010 † Lola § Events ‡ Comments (0) °

Paolo Pandolfo

Just got back from seeing Paolo Pandolfo improvise on the viola da gamba at the London Baroque Festival. He was jaw-droppingly good; I’m not sure I can pick out any of it as the high point — it was all high points! — but if forced, perhaps I could pick on the ciaccona after one by Marin Marais.

As soon as we got home, it was time to get hold of some recordings by him. There’s some interesting stuff on Amazon, but the intriguing-sounding recording he did of the Bach Cello Suites arranged for the viol was £87, second hand! Luckily it turns out that the record label has re-issued it, even if Amazon don’t have it, and you can get the new issue here for a much more reasonable £21.

Posted 14 May 2010 † Giles § Events § Recorded music ‡ Comments (0) °

Fountain of the Baroque, keep running, please!

The first concert of this year’s Lufthansa Baroque Festival: La Venexiana enchanted the audience with a truly extraordinary performance of the Vespers, such an amazingly beautiful piece that opened 400 years (so far ;-) of Baroque music. Thank you, Monteverdi!

The concert was recorded by BBC Radio 3 and will be broadcast in “Performance on 3″ at 7pm on Tuesday, June 1.

Posted 13 May 2010 † Lola § Events ‡ Comments (0) °

Teatro d’Amore by L’Arpeggiata

Although this is not a new recording, I just came across it following up on links to the astonishing countertenor Philippe Jaroussky. Mesmerizing music (by Monteverdi), mesmerizing voice, mesmerizing performance, don’t miss the video they have on their website.

Posted 12 March 2010 † Lola § Recorded music ‡ Comments Off °

Some viol photography

(Sorry, couldn’t resist it.)

It’s taken a year to get round to it, but finally I’ve managed to rent a bass viola da gamba and arrange lessons:

Viola da Gamba in its case

One lesson so far, with Liam Byrne; it’s both easier and harder than I was expecting. Easier because the tuning and the frets feel familiar from my teenage years noodling away on electric guitars, harder because I keep trying to play it like a cello and it doesn’t like that.

Of course, the cello’s staying — no way I could give it up. Here’s a joint shot of both of them:

Cello and viol

They seem to get on well together. The cello is named Charles, the viol has no name yet.

Posted 11 March 2010 † Giles § Musical instruments ‡ Comments (1) °

More practising notes

I’m still sticking to my practice schedule:

  • 20 minutes of a scale, though now I’m playing with a metronome, which is really helping a lot with my rhythm, even when I’m playing other stuff without the metronome (many thanks to my teacher for that advice!).  How To Practise has posted a great list of reasons to play scales, BTW.
  • 20 minutes of my current study piece, which is currently the sarabande from Bach’s G Major suite — a serious stretch at the moment, but it feels like it’s getting somewhere. The rhythm is the tricky bit (see: sudden interest in using the metronome all the time).
  • 20 minutes on a new piece that varies at least week-by-week, and now sometimes from day to day, to try to improve my sight-reading.  This really seems to have helped!  Yesterday I looked at the bass part for #6 from Purcell’s Sonatas in IV Parts for the first time.  It’s really simple, just five bars long, repeated, in B-flat major (though the facsimile edition confused me by using three flat symbols — one for each of the B-flats! — though actually it’s presumably G minor anyway), but would have taken a while for me to piece together even back in March.  This time, I played it through passably on the first pass and was entirely comfortable with rhythm, phrasing, and intonation after 15 minutes.  A small achievement, but it felt great!

Now if only I could find a way to play more than one hour a day…

Posted 02 June 2009 † Giles § Cello practice ‡ Comments (1) °

Linn Records - high quality music downloads

We were looking at the website of the Retrospect Ensemble (previously known as the King’s Consort) and noticed that their recordings are to be published by Linn Records, a Glasgow-based record label.

It looks like Linn publish some great artists as well as Retrospect, but what’s particularly exciting is that they offer much higher-quality downloadable music than any other label I’ve seen.  If you’re like me, you’ve been resistant to buying downloadable music because of the low sound quality.  It’s always stored in MP3 format, which is lower quality than CDs, so it makes more sense to buy CDs — and then if you want the convenience of keeping the music on a computer, you can copy them over using a CD-quality “lossless” format like FLAC.

Linn make this messing around with bits of plastic unnecessary.  They offer not only MP3s, but (for a small premium) downloads of FLAC or lossless WMA recordings.  But the icing on the cake is that for a bit more — quite a bit more, to be honest — they sell what they call “studio master” quality downloads (24 bit, 88kHz), which are even higher quality than normal CDs (about the same as SACD, maybe slightly higher).

We’ve bought Retrospect’s recording of Purcell’s Sonatas in IV parts in full Studio Master FLAC quality, and it’s gorgeous, worth every penny.  So now the only thing limiting our record collection is our internet connection and our bank balance…

Posted 02 June 2009 † Giles § Publishers § Recorded music ‡ Comments (0) °

The 2009 Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music (London)

The 2009 London Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music is about to start; it runs May 14-23, and the venues are St. John’s, Smith Square and Westminster Abbey. Information and booking here. We’ll definitely be attending some of the concerts!

Posted 13 May 2009 † Lola § Events ‡ Comments (0) °