Celebrating chamber music from the English and French Baroque, ‘Ayres & Graces’ by the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra featured striking images curated by Australian designer Silvana Azzi Heras projected as background on a stage-wide LED screen behind the musicians with a period music program that spans both sides of the English Channel. We travel to the court of the Sun King Louis XIV in France and Charles 11 in London. The concert was curated and directed by Principal Baroque Flute and Recorder Melissa Farrow. (Artistic Director Paul Dyer was in the audience.)
This performance saw both the audience, heavily reduced in number, temperature checked and Covid spaced and the Orchestra also affected – here reduced to Farrow and Mikaela Oberg on flute and recorders, Rafael Font on violin, Marianne Yeomans on viola, Anton Baba on baroque cello and viola da gamba, and Tommie Anderson on theorbo, baroque guitar and archlute – and spread evenly across the stage.
The playing was exquisite, the rapport between the ensemble precise and well established. The various segments of music were introduced and placed in context by various performers.
First to Paris and Versailles – vibrant , fluttering recorders were prominent in the Ouverture to Jean-Baptiste Lully’s “tragédie en musique” Cadmus et Hermione, while the lush , rich tones of theorbo and gamba featured in two pastoral musettes by Marin Marais.
Farrow’s graceful , supple baroque flute was lushly elegant in Jacques-Martin Hotteterre’s ‘Pourquoy, Doux Rossignol from Airs et brunettes’ (in an arrangement for flute and basso continuo) joined by Oberg for Lully’s ‘La Jeune Iris from Trios de la Chambre du Roi’ before the hesitant yet cheerfully impassioned violin introduced François Couperin’s chirpy ‘Air de Baccantes’ from Huitième Concert dans le Goût Théâtral, Les Goûts-Réunis, including spritely baroque guitar and recorders.
The French half of the program concluded with more Lully. The rather gloomy yet dignified ‘bedchamber’ music of Sommeil from Atys featured aching violin lines entwined with sombre accompaniment of theorbo and gamba, before the stately formality of the ‘Entrée des Zéphyrs’. Last came the bustling ‘Chaconne des Scaramouches, Trivelins et Arlequin’ from the comédie-ballet ‘Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme’.
The second half saw a jump to London. First up was Purcell’s brisk ‘Curtain Tune’ for a semi-opera adaptation of Shakespeare’s ‘Timon of Athens’ with its scurrying strings and bustling recorders in a repeated harmonic pattern, breathless darting and birdlike against a striking backdrop of iridescent blue-green and red Betta fish.
‘Strawberries and Cream’ by John Playford was slow, stately and reflective, a mournful dance with some resonating theorbo and gamba parts.
Richard Sumarte’s ‘Lachrymae’ from the ‘Manchester Gamba Book was a poignant and moving solo for Baba It sounded very contemporary with tricky fingering of the pizzicato.
Compilations from ‘The Division Flute’, ‘The Division Violin’, and ‘The English Dancing Master’ by John Walsh, Thomas Baltzar and Playford followed, two different sizes and types of recorder being used as well as a tambourine. Composer Francesco Geminiani’s take on the Scottish melody ‘Auld Bob Morrice’ was lushly elegant, the violin showing off, the theorbo providing a dripping beat underneath.
Monet’s painting of London’s Waterloo Bridge was used as a backdrop to Handel’s reticent Recorder ‘Sonata in B-flat (recorder, cello and lute) HWV 377’ with its throbbing pulsating recorder before excerpts from the opera Berenice, bright and bubbly with scurrying flourishes, the recorder acting like a soprano showing off singing an aria, the whole concert finishing with a tumbling , jaunty gigue for the entire ensemble.
A delectable performance.
Running time an hour.
The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra in ‘Ayres and Graces’ played the City Recital Hall between 27th and 31st October 2020
Artists
Melissa Farrow Baroque flute and recorder
Rafael Font Baroque violin
Marianne Yeomans Baroque viola
Laura Moore Viola da gamba
Kirsten Barry Baroque oboe and recorder
Tommie Andersson Theorbo and Baroque guitar
Program
Lully Prologue: Ouverture to Cadmus et Hermione, LWV 49
Cordier La Bocanne primitive
Marais Musettes 28 and 29 from Pièces de Viole, Livre IV, Suite No.4 in A minor
Hoteterre Pourquoy doux rossignols from Airs et Brunettes
Lully La Jeune Iris from Trios de la Chambre du Roi, LWV 35
Couperin Air de Baccantes from Huitième Concert dans le goût Théâtral, Les goûts-réunis
Campra Ouverture to L’Europe Galante Suite
Lully Sommeil and Entrée des Zéphyrs from Atys, LWV 53
Jacquet de la Guerre Chamber Sonata No.4 in G minor: Grave, Presto, Adagio, Becarre allegro
Lully Chaconne des Scaramouches, Trivelins et Arlequin from Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, LWV 43
Purcell Curtain Tune on a Ground from Timon of Athens, Z 632
Playford Strawberries and Cream from The English Dancing Master (1657)
Simpson Divisions on a Ground from The Division Viol (1655)
Playford/Walsh/Baltzar Medley of tunes from The Division Flute, The Division Violin, and The English Dancing Master
Geminiani Auld Bob Morrice from A Treatise of Good Taste in the Art of Musick
Handel Oboe Sonata in C minor, Op.1 No.8, HWZ 366: Largo, Allegro
Handel Excerpts from Berenice, regina d’Egitto, HWV 38: Andante, Larghetto, Gigue
Featured pic- The Brandenburg Orchestra. Photo Keith Saunders