Omni Video: Ponce at the Villa Falconieri

I managed to take care of all my morning chores in time to watch the premiere streaming of the latest video presented by the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts. The video was recorded at the Villa Falconieri in the Italian city of Frascati, which is known for its frescos that date from the sixteenth century. One of those frescos served as the “backdrop” for the performers, the duo of guitarist Andrea De Vitis and lutenist Simone Vallerotonda.

The performance was only about six minutes in duration, consisting of two relatively short movements by Manuel Ponce that were inspired by the music of the eighteenth-century German lutenist Sylvius Leopold Weiss. (To provide a frame of reference, Weiss was two years younger than Johann Sebastian Bach; and both of those composers died in the same year, 1750.) Honoring the tradition of that period, the first of Ponce’s movements is a prelude. This is then followed by a “Balletto” movement, basically a “generic” ABA dance form, which would have been familiar to Bach. The two performers prepared their own performing arrangement of Ponce’s score.

A frame from the video being discussed allowing the viewer to appreciate Vallerotonda’s finger-work on this lute

That arrangement allowed for a generous serving of thematic give-and-take, allowing the attentive listener to appreciate the distinctive qualities of the two instruments. That appreciation was enhanced by video work that established which instrument was in the foreground at any particular time. Indeed, the visual account of how these two musicians engaged with each other was so compelling that the “historically significant fresco” never received much attention from the video crew. As readers might guess, my own listening habits were more involved with the performers than with the scenery!

This video now has its own URL in the Omni video library, making it available for viewing at any time; and there is much to appreciate in how a pair of Italian performers can evoke the spirit of a twentieth-century Mexican composer, who, in turn, was evoking the spirit of that eighteenth-century lutenist.