National Gallery, Dublin. Handel – Concerto Grosso in G Op 3 No 1. Vivaldi – Violin Concerto in B flat RV362 (La caccia). Bach – Brandenburg Concerto No 2. Vivaldi – Violin Concerto in D RV210.
The Irish Baroque Orchestra’s Masterworks series – complete performances of sets of concertos by Bach, Handel and Vivaldi – is full of fascinating contrasts, not least among the composer personalities you would be tempted to infer from the music.
Take this programme, for example. Handel comes across as a confident man who feels he has nothing to prove. The first concerto grosso from his Opus 3 set has a kind of benign assurance to the opening which prompts one to lean back and await the pleasures to come. These include the soft warbling of a pair of recorders in the slow movement, and the chortling of bassoons in the finale.
Bach is more technically, musically and intellectually adventurous and demonstrative. The scoring of the second of the Brandenburg Concertosis in itself quite a statement. The solo instruments are trumpet, recorder, oboe and violin (Mark Blackadder, Andreas Helm, Hannah McLaughlin, Anita Vedres).
With the IBO’s period instruments the trumpet was not the brassily blazing instrument of the modern orchestra, but a pipingly high voice, speaking in a tone that was surprisingly covered, although it still showed signs of strain from having to work at such altitudes. It’s almost a given that the trumpet will attract the ear away from the rest of the instruments. But the IBO’s performance, directed from the violin by Monica Huggett, kept the rest of the band’s activity well-lit.
Vivaldi is the exuberant show-off of the series, a man to whom the well-turned virtuoso effect seems to have been as natural as breathing. Two violin concertos from his Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’invenzione (The Trial of Harmony and Invention) were played by Claire Duff (No 10, La caccia) and Monica Huggett (No 11, notable for the elaborate cadenza in its finale).
Both works fall into that category of music where the challenges are all for the performer, not the listener. Duff and Huggett conveyed their irrepressible appeal with spirited confidence.
