Blazing Baroque. Photograph via Australian Brandenburg Orchestra.
The youthful Australian Brandenburg Orchestra strode onstage all smiles and bristling with energy, led by its cheerful artistic director, Paul Dyer for its latest instalment in its 2016 subscription season, Blazing Baroque. The concert opened with Giovanni Sammartini’s brief Overture to the opera Memet. It provided a performance model which persisted for the remainder of the concert; namely, driven quicker movements and a somewhat unctuous delivery of the slower.
Immediately after the Overture, concertmaster, and on this occasion violin soloist Shaun-Lee Chen arrived onstage and was met by an embrace from Dyer. Vivaldi’s Concerto for violin in D major Grosso Mogul, one of the composer’s five hundred or so concerti, is a show pony with impossibly quick passage writing and flamboyant cadenzas. Occasionally Chen had problems with intonation and his ornamentation was unconvincingly idiosyncratic, but nonetheless it was a sterling effort. Georg Philipp Telemann’s Grand Concerto was recently unearthed in Kiev, having been misappropriated from a library in Berlin by the Nazis in World War II and then hoarded by Russia. More a suite of dances than a concerto, this is an elaborate French affair in five movements. Following interval there were three concerti. The first by Vivaldi was for ‘various instruments’ (two natural horns, violin, two oboes and bassoon). The performance was full of bombast with natural horns regularly getting into serious difficulties, though the violin solo in the Grave movement was touchingly expressive. Telemann’s Concerto for flute and recorder in E minor was a delight. Possibly the most distinguished work on the program was Johann Fasch’s Concerto in D major for violin. Chen delivered a highly competent and compelling reading of this work.
The orchestra’s playing was solid throughout, technically proficient and expressive, though Dyer’s ‘over the top’ direction would perhaps not be everyone’s cup of chai. I found his charm campaign embarrassing and believe the music is able to speak for itself.
Rating: 3 stars out of 5
Australian Brandenburg Orchestra – Blazing Boroque
Paul Dyer, artistic director
Shaun Lee-Chen, violin
Presented by Australian Brandenburg Orchestra
Elisabeth Murdoch Hall Melbourne Recital Centre
Saturday 30 July 2016
