Cover image: Janet See, with Baroque flute (Photo courtesy artist)
The historical context of Seattle Baroque Orchestra’s latest program boggles the mind, when we understand what we heard Sunday afternoon was but eight works from a collection of nearly 1800 volumes of music collected from the Dresden court of August the Strong–mostly during the early 18th century, when classical music performance there was in its heyday.
It’s to be hoped that SBO will dip further into this collection, which still exists in its entirety. We heard only two or three composers whose names are well known, Telemann, Vivaldi and, familiar to flute players, Quantz, with the rest mostly unknown. Judging by what we heard at Nordstrom Recital Hall, there is a treasury of fine compositions we don’t know by equally unrecognized composers, and many of them well worth a visit.
For this program, suggested by SBO concertmaster Linda Melsted and chosen by music director Alexander Weimann, we heard concertos for flute, oboe, bassoon and violin plus orchestral suites at either end. A couple were astonishing: the Bassoon Concerto in E flat major by Franz Jakob Horneck made it clear how technically skilled bassoon players of the day were. Florid, fast, highly ornamented in the first and last movements, gorgeously expressive in the slow movement, it was given a superb performance by Nate Helgeson.
Linda Melsted, violin (Photo courtesy artist)
The other, Giuseppe Antonio Brescianello’s Violin Concerto in C Minor, departed from the usual format in the first notes, starting with a soft violin solo accompanied by continuo harpsichord and cello only, before the full orchestra joined in. The writing was imaginative and dramatic, the slow movement solo highly ornamented and directed to be soft over steady, quiet playing from the other musicians. We don’t often hear the highly accomplished Melsted as soloist, though she has been the featured soloist many times around North America.
One of the most attractive aspect of this concert was the opportunity to hear concertos composed for solo winds. Johann Joachim Quantz wrote plenty for his instrument, the flute, and Janet See, another remarkable player, took the solo role in his Concerto for flute and strings in G Major. Quantz showed off the instrument’s versatility not only with cadenzas in both first and last fast movements, but a slow one where the flute shone over muted high strings, later with all the strings plucked. Curtis Foster took the stage for Johann Friedrich Fasch’s Concerto for oboe and Strings in G Minor. While Foster gave a fine performance, this was perhaps the most conventional of all the works performed, the least imaginative.
Having a chance to hear the Baroque winds solo gave an opportunity to hear how they differ from modern instruments. All are wood, mostly valveless, and all are more gentle in tone than their modern equivalents. The bassoon is more hooded, the oboe more plangent, the flute less piercing than their today versions, but all have qualities well suited to the works of their day, those played on this program.
We also heard a Quartet for violin, flute cello and continuo in D major by Telemann, an Orchestra Suite by Johann Christoph Pez, plus a lively one by Johann Georg Pisandel, titled “Imitation des caracteres de la dance,” in which he included brief samples of seven different dance styles, ending with a Presto Concertino.
The whole was a fascinating window into the life of the Dresden musical scene of the day. Alexander Weimann directed from the harpsichord, and cellist Annabeth Shirley joined him as a first class continuo player.
