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Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and the commodious concert house and integrated city design


Blog on Freiburg Baroque Orchestra Concert and the commodious Concert House


The @FreiburgBaroque  orchestra gave a concert devoted to the music of Pergolesi.  A musician at the Neapolitan court of the Colonna family whose  command of appealing and creative approach to sacred choral music and poised  counterpoint gave him a meteoric rise before an early death cut off a   In their programme two of his best know works the Stabat Mater with its lovely suspensions, and the comic intermezzo La Serva Padrona, were preceded by a sinfonia and a violin concerto played with great beauty by Goltz and his band .

The Freiburg Baroque Orchestra is an interesting musical phenomenon in German Late 20TH century baroque  performance history . Founded by a group of students at the local conservatoire in the 1980s it was a pioneer in Germany in grasping the tectonic changes occurring in performance practice in the early music movement with regard to baroque and early classical performance putting Freiburg on the map as far as innovative programming and the adoption of new musical ideas. This was from the ground up – the student inquirers who while established orchestras, record companies in Germnay   were resistant to adoption of any performances using what were considered retrogressive gut strings, valveless brass instruments, and no vibrato or tempo rubato.     Today the orchestra is no longer a student endeavour but a beautifully coherent and stylish instrument - led by violinist van der Goltz – which can give any British baroque band a run for its money…..dare I say it somewhere near the front on the evidence of  this performance.   For here is a band which evidenty rehearses considerably, performs multiple concerts of the same repertoire judging by the mini-tour described in the programme therefore honing th performnance 

As seems to be the growing practice, for the concerti and the Stabat Mater, the strings (excepting the continuo parts, celli, bassi and cembalo) stand, and this brings a dynamism  by movement to their musicality which involves both movement, grace, an inner joyfulness and sometimes playfulness in the music.   But this is excellent playing too….the challenge for the baroque string player is that the style is to play without vibrato, on gut strings.


London (and Boston) led the way in the baroque authentic revival  – Christopher Hogwood, Trevor Pinnock,  John Eliot Gardiner, and Roger Norrington whose profile adorns billboards around Freiburg for his visit with the SWR Radio Symphony Orchestra later this month where he is principal conductor (demonstrating how the transformation has now been completed and traditional orchestras are jumping on a bandwagon –that has passed – of  authenticism )   

  

The hall itself  Freiburg’s KonzertHaus was build some 8 years ago and stands opposite the main railway station with a three basement car parks to accommodate evening attenders as well as Railway commuters.   So much of German town planning to be admired - Truro makes a sad contrast - rail station a country mile from bus station etc..
The concert hall accommodates at a rough calculation some 1400 comfortable high backed and generously upholstered audience members.  And this midweek concert was more or less full with tickets costing in the region of Euros 50 at the bottom end.!  While mostly the well heeled professional class casually clothed are in the audience and enjoying the entertainment (3 curtain calls) – there are also younger people and a good number of audience in their 30s and 40s

At the risk of being boring I would also draw attention to the scale and volume of the front of house accommodation at the Freburgh Konzert House which over three floors looks out over the city to the Minster glinting in the dark, and affords ample room for the ample cloakroom facilities, areas for interval socialising so that circulating is comfortable without squeezing or rubber necking to get to a bar.    For a city of 230,000 inhabitants in its – where there is also a theatre featuring Opera (Katya Kabanova) and cotemporary theatre (Angels from America) this is an enviable basis to run performing arts in s small city.




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