Artful Baroque Dialogues – View Info – 2024-05-09 11:34:37

/ world today news/ The “Baroque Art” festival does not suffer from a lack of audience – the music it exhibits, with its harmonizing beauty, is accessible even to unenlightened listeners, and for music lovers it is the eagerly awaited autumn festival. It is true that on the global web we can find an abundance of musicians and ensembles preaching the ideas of historically informed performance. Let’s hear, buy at affordable prices reference records in this field, as well as the latest production with old music. But no matter how perfect a recording is, filling us with delight, an experience of another order is the collective energy that swirls in the concert hall and layers a treasure of emotions so impossible to describe.

Let us not forget – the music of the Baroque was living music, it is not a music of unrealistic recording perfection, but of spontaneity, of artful rhetoric, of unbridled fantasy, of excessive delight. And in this sense, every concert from XII edition of “The Art of the Baroque” was a colorful picture from the great baroque musical puzzle.

The festival began with “Venetian Carnival 1729” – a wonderful recital-spectacle of the mezzo-soprano Anne Halenberg and the top ensemble Il Pomo d’oro (cf. TO – No. 3). “Concerts from Darmstadt” focused on works by three composers: concertos for solo recorder (by Graupner, Fach and Telemann), for two recorders, for violin, for recorder and bassoon (Telemann). There is no trace of Georg Philipp Telemann residing in Darmstadt, but a large part of his instrumental opus is in the University and City Library there, having inherited manuscripts once owned by Landgrave Ernst Ludwig von Hesse-Darmstadt. Perhaps some of them were commissioned by the aristocrat, with whom the composer knew well, they may have been written for his superb chapel, led for 49 years by Christoph Graupner – whom Telemann befriended as a youth in Leipzig . As for Johann Friedrich Fasch, 25 years old, he arrived to study composition in Darmstadt with Graupner and Grünewald, then worked in various cities. For the longest time, having mastered the Darmstadt experience, Fash remained as Kapellmeister in Count Morcin’s orchestra in Lukavec, Bohemia. It is clear, the festival programs aim not only to be a well-ordered set of works, they make sense of and look for more intriguing connections between the plays, between the authors, and reveal the context of the sounding music. (To this enlightening point we will add the highly professional texts in the program booklet.)

The idea for the project “Darmstadt Concerts” is by the Dutch recorder player Erik Bosgraaf. A name from the world’s flute elite (for whom, if you delve into the archive of the former Kultura newspaper, you will learn a lot), he has consistently participated in “Baroque Art” since the creation of this forum and is a favorite of the Sofia audience. He usually performs at the festival with the ensemble “Cordevento” (in the main trio or a more extended composition), and this year he was the soloist of the Sofia Philharmonic for the first time. What a fruitful chance it is for some of the orchestrators (in chamber ensemble format) to have mentors in this music, who with just a few rehearsals had transformed the standard reception of the philharmonics for a baroque sound: Bosgraaf as soloist-conductor, Zefira Valova – concertmaster (besides inspiration and artistic director of “The Art of the Baroque”, she is a very skilled violinist, with extensive experience as a leader in famous European ensembles), the harpsichordist Francesco Piano and the bassoonist Sabina Yordanova, brilliant in building the basso continuo foundation. Eric Bosgraaf is a musician with an amazing imagination that spreads in the meaning of every component in the text. The complex virtuoso figurations and passages, the exquisite cantilena, the breathing of the phrases, he plays so lightly and radiantly joyfully that it seems unreal to you. In the double concerts, the recorder player was a fantastic partner with the talented young ladies Wei Hung (delicate and pastel in its sonic touch) and Sabina Yordanova (a performer with wonderful tonal culture and taste). It is difficult to track exactly, but it seems to me that a large part of the Darmstadt concerts were played in Bulgaria for the first time. Like Telemann’s violin concerto in A minor, performed by Zefira Valova. And in the second program with the Sofia Philharmonic she presented as a soloist absolutely unknown concerts from Antonio Vivaldi. They are written for Anna Mariahis most distinguished pupil at the Ospedale della pietà in Venice, who became maestra di cappella at the school, responsible for concerts and teaching string instruments. “There are few female composers and especially instrumentalists in the 18th century who manage to go beyond the horizons of a closed society” – says Zefira – “We also introduced a new author, Madalena Laura Lombardini, also born in Venice, she is an ambassador of the later gallant style. The fact that she married a famous violinist at the time gave her the opportunity to perform together and thus gradually gain popularity, publish her works”. Lombardini’s concerto in A major and especially Vivaldi’s five concertos (chosen from the total of 25 dedicated to Anna-Maria) are astonishingly varied, a veritable treasure trove of virtuosic tricks. Zefira Valova vitally personifies the imagery and form of these exquisite specimens with noticeably personal ideas of sound, color and articulation. And the Finnish harpsichordist Aapo Hakkinen (another important name from the European baroque fraternity) with a firm but flexible “grip” not only maintained the unity of the instrumental ensemble with the basso continuo part, but displayed his amazing harmonic invention in it.

More than 25 years after her first tour in Bulgaria, “The Art of the Baroque” brought the legendary again Emma Kirkby. The soprano with a sweet-sounding angelic voice compared to a stream of silver. Known as the singer who never sang Verdi, and above all as the standard singer with her interpretations of works by the Old English masters, Pergolesi, Alessandro Scarlatti, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Bach. Before devoting herself entirely to music, as a student she busied herself with the study of ancient Greek and Latin texts at Somerville College, Oxford University. After studying at the “Schola cantorum” – Oxford, he began to sing in the “Taverner” choir. Her name is associated with the ensembles “Consort of Musicke” by Anthony Rouley and “Academy of Ancient Music” by Christopher Hogwood. Also with her master classes – in recent years she has been teaching more, giving concerts less often. The hall of the BAS could not accommodate the admirers of Emma Kirkby, who gave a recital in the company of two lutenists: the English Paul Kiefer and Bulgarian Yavor Genov. To him we owe the favorable response of the singer to participate in the festival. The two met in 2017 at a joint concert at the Baroque Festival in Valletta – Malta, where Kirkby received a special award for his enormous performing contribution to the field of early music. And the compilation of the program “Musical Dreams” is the work of Yavor Genov. Between the magnificent songs and arias of John Dowland, John Daniel and Thomas Campion, sounded the exquisite lute duets of John Johnson, Thomas Robinson and Anonymous. Meeting Emma Kirkby was an unforgettable experience. Even her best recordings cannot convey this vast, vibrating palette of nuances with which she sculpts sound-clad poetry with an artful theatricality colored by the phonetic beauty of the language. “Use the voice as an instrument in the ensemble. When you sing old music, forget about the piano, the lute can teach you what to do with the sound,” advises the singer. – “Music is a very fluid matter, follow your natural feelings in the interpretation.” For Kirkby, these postulates are not theory, but living practice. An extremely dialogic musician, she prefers concerts to recordings. She clearly enjoys singing her repertoire with young performers – not only for the feeling of carrying on the tradition, but also for the refreshing freshness in the stage interaction they give her. Despite the respect it inspires, Yavor Genov quickly overcame the initial concern and played music with the great singer with impressive unity and relief sound plasticity. Paul Kiefer somehow stood in his partnership with Kirkby more distant, but in the duets of February the two performers achieved a wonderful ensemble homogeneity.

The small extra-baroque deviation this year was in memory of Gioachino Rossini (150 years since the composer’s death). The festival baroque ensemble in women’s composition: Christina Hinova and Zefira Valova – violins, Teodora Atanasova – cello and Ilina Zhablenska – double bass, presented the sonatas for string quartet (the finale of the second in D major gives the title of the program “Storm”), as well as the duo for cello and double bass. These, undeservedly overshadowed chamber works, showed in their virtuoso-artistic performance the instrumental creative potential of the operatic genius. And in the “curious” column we can include his bravura piano Tarantella and the transcription for violin and piano of the overture to the opera “The Thieving Magpie” with which we were introduced Vasily Ilisavski (hammer clavier) and Zefira Valova.

The finale of the festival culminates with the concert of the Baroque Orchestra of the European Union. In this mobile academy, where every year new and new talented young musicians of Europe, selected by competition, learn from significant figures their experience in playing early music, for the first time as a conductor and leader in the project “Choose Baroque” (together with The Flanders Festival – Antwerp) includes the magnetic French violinist Amandine Beyer. Of course, the management of the institution assigned her to initiate the performers in the intricacies of the French style. Beyer composed the program herself, which includes iconic authors and works: Suite from “Europe Gallant” by André Campra, Concerto for violin and strings in D minor and Suite from “Scilla and Glaucus” by Jean-Marie Leclerc, “Delirium amoris” and Fifth Sonata from “Armonico Tributo” by Georg Muffat and 25th Comic Concerto for Flute, Strings and Basso Continuo by Michel Corret. A program that outlines a broad perimeter of executive challenges. What does Amandine Beyer want to pass on from his knowledge to the youngsters in the orchestra? “For me, it’s always nice to work with young people – this way, it seems like I can stay young even longer.” It is also the best opportunity to tell them that they have the freedom to make music, to express themselves, to be part of a small orchestra with a good atmosphere. To understand that if you are a nice person and you love music, you will really have the opportunity to show it to the public, to share it with people. I try to make them realize this opportunity that is in front of them, take advantage of it and in the process of playing have a lot of fun. I’m sure baroque music deepens your sense of music. But you can be a wonderful musician even if you don’t play baroque music. You can be a wonderful musician without studying baroque music. You can play beautiful baroque music with a modern instrument. I’m not racist. For me, the most important thing is that you play this music, that you like it.” Amandine Beyer, who also appeared as a soloist, is a captivating performer. The richly ornamented musical rhetoric so specific to French Baroque speech is its element. If you know the works well, the discovery of unsuspected details, the variegated liveliness in the phrasing, the strokes, the dynamics is intoxicating. “For me, baroque is something huge, all-encompassing,” says Beyer. – “Like a sack full of things related to textures and colors. A lot of gold and silver, but also copper, silk, cotton, wool. Many textures, many colors. And, of course, it’s up to you to do whatever you want with them. What I love about Baroque is the freedom. So I like to play at different tempos, sometimes I experiment with acoustics. This is the game, and what you hear is the joy of playing this game.”

* Yanina Bogdanova is a musicologist – long-time music editor and moderator in BNR, music critic and contributor to the newspaper “Kultura”. He is currently the author of the newspaper “K”