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Atlanta Baroque Depicts Lovely Italy, Sourly
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A battle for prominence has been joined amongst the two early music ensembles in town. The Atlanta Baroque Orchestra fired the latest salvo on Sunday from inside the opulent chapel of Peachtree United Methodist Church. And whatever their shortcomings, they cannot be accused of patronizing their audience with tired warhorse material. Indeed, nothing on the program would be familiar to any but the most ardent connoisseurs of early music.
The program, “Descriptive Music by Italian Composers,” consisted of three works from early and mid-18th Century. First up was Giuseppe Sammartini’s “Christmas Concerto.” OK, they’re a couple of months late. But it’s a fresh work, pretty and gentle. And broadly descriptive of the nativity, if you’re willing to use your imagination a bit. This piece employed only the strings, with a trio given prominence.
The ensemble plays period instruments (replicas of 18th Century instruments), and the big problem this presents is tuning, which can be a tad imprecise even under the best circumstances. Here it became a serious problem that would dog the entire concert. (Atlanta’s other early-music troupe, New Trinity Baroque, has a few nagging matters of their own to resolve, but proper tuning isn’t generally one of them.)
Pietro Locatelli is celebrated as an innovator, and his music probably sounded pretty wild to his contemporaries. Still, there are sometimes reasons that a composer falls out of favor for a few hundred years. A compelling case was not made for his “Lament of Arianna” at this concert. It’s a busy piece, with lots of repetition, but few surprises, other than the fact that it has ten movements. Again we heard only the strings, this time a quartet backed up by the others. And again, there were significant intonation problems.
The most successful piece of the day was Francesco Geminiani’s “The Enchanted Forest.” Apparently it was written to accompany a sort of pantomime based on an epic poem about the Crusades. Staging the pantomime probably wouldn’t work today — unlike the audience for which the music was written, none of us are intimate with the texts — but the program notes gave us a sense of what was up. The pre-concert talk might have enlightened us more, but without amplification the talk was almost all unintelligible, at least from my seat. Under the direction of John Hsu, tempi were brisk, playing was nimble, and the brasses rocked. The problem with string tone persisted.
This is an earnest group of musicians, and they worked hard. But what was really missing at this concert, more than precise intonation, was a sense of joy and mischief. Early music needs to be a kind of adventure or it becomes kind of a drag. Still, this concert was recorded, and you can hear it for yourself when it will likely be played on WABE’s “Atlanta Music Scene” at a later date.
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