United Kingdom Edinburgh International Festival 2024 [13]: Irish Baroque Orchestra, Peter Whelan (director & harpsichord, 22.8); Midori (violin), Özgür Aydin (piano, 23.8). Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, 22 & 23.8.2024. (SRT)
Thursday morning’s Queen’s Hall concert from the Irish Baroque Orchestra (IBO) was a delightful potpourri held together by a unifying idea. It was a recreation of a concert that took place in Dublin in 1742, the year that Handel arrived in Dublin and premiered Messiah. Consequently, there was a lot of Handel on the programme; but the real motor behind the programme was the enigmatic ‘Mr Charles’ who organised the 1742 concert. Little is known about this mysterious figure, save that he was an impresario, perhaps of Hungarian descent, and that he was keen to make a buck through his musical adventures; and who can blame him for that?
Consequently, the IBO’s enormously mixed programme was like a window into a vanished musical world. That is a speciality of theirs, however: they are referred to in their biography as ‘Ireland’s time-travelling orchestra.’ They certainly have the mix of musical colour to pull it off. For all the transparency of their period instruments, they have a wonderfully assertive sound, with strings bright and characterful, and two natural horns that play with their bells thrust in the air. That created an immediately striking effect that they maintained throughout their concert, supplemented by tangy winds and a relaxed, easy theorbo line.
Mr Charles was, apparently, very keen to introduce the Dublin public to the newest musical instruments, hence we heard a concerto by Hasse that was more like a wind serenade, with its delightfully wheezy chalumeau and its spicy oboe and bassoon. A suave, relaxed oboe d’amore took centre stage for Telemann’s Napolitana, and a baroque clarinet also made an appearance in arrangements of Handel’s Water Music suites; an instrument that sounded as though it had no business being there, but we were all very glad that it was. Not to be left out, the strings had their showcase in Geminiani’s La Folia concerto grosso, with its fantastically busy textures; but they always played with terrific elegance.
The whole concert had a winningly upbeat air to it, thanks mostly to Peter Whelan, who directed from the harpsichord. He is what they call a ‘weel-kent face’ in these parts, from his previous incarnation as principal bassoon of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, so he is always warmly received when he returns. He is such an affable presence on the podium, however, that that would be the case even if he didn’t have such an Edinburgh connection. He chatted warmly about the programme, always with a cheery smile, and he egged on his players from the harpsichord with lots of subtle gestures. Of course, we could only see the back of his head while he conducted, but you got the strong impression he was grinning from ear to ear the whole time he was doing so.
If the IBO’s sound was all lean freshness, then Midori’s sound the following morning was much more traditional. Her violin recital, with pianist Özgür Aydin, was focused on much more Romantic playing, with lots of vibrato and a big-boned piano style to match it. In that sense it was quite old fashioned, but it suited her programme very well, most especially the Robert Schumann Romances, with their rush of emotions contained within form. Her Fauré, too, benefited from the surging emotional intensity of the outer movements, balanced by the atmospheric darkness of the slow barcarolle, rapidly dissipated by the rapid-fire Scherzo.
That style didn’t fit Mozart’s pared-back classicism quite so much, but Midori and Aydin still invested the skittish outer movements with great care, and it was fascinating to hear how well they matched Mozart’s tendency to toss the melody around between the violin and the piano as a real union of equals. The same was true of Richard Strauss’s youthful Violin Sonata, but here more because of the attention-grabbing muscularity of the piano part, with its roiling chords and emotional depth. More generally, the sonata brims over with youthful self-confidence, as you might expect from this composer. Midori and Aydin played it with extroverted ebullience, with a lovely gloss on the violin sound and a delicate sparkle on the piano, even as Strauss was putting it through the wringer.
Simon Thompson
22.8.2024 – Irish Baroque Orchestra, Peter Whelan (director & harpsichord), Queen’s Hall.
Handel – Overture to Il pastor fido
Hasse – Concerto in F; ‘Signora Barberini’s Minuet’ from Concerto, Op.4 No.1
Handel (arr. Walsh) – ‘Va tacito e nascosto’ from Giulio Cesare; Water Music
Mr Charles – ‘Chasse’ from Duets for Horn
Geminiani – Concerto grosso, Op.5 No.12 ‘La Folia’
Telemann – Napolitana, TWV 41 B4
Bocchi – Sonata X for Cello
Lully – ‘Marche pour la Cérémonie des Turcs’ from Le bourgeois gentilhomme
23.8.2024 – Midori (violin), Özgür Aydin (piano), Queen’s Hall.
Mozart – Violin Sonata No.23 K306
Fauré – Violin Sonata No.1, Op.13
R. Schumann – Three Romances, Op.94
R. Strauss – Sonata for Violin and Piano, Op.18