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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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