Voices of Music Holiday Tradition Returns

Last night saw the return of Voices of Music (VoM) to St. Mark’s Lutheran Church to launch its season programming. The title of the program was Holiday Concertos: Bach, Vivaldi, Telemann, & Torelli. This resumed a tradition, which had last been presented in December of 2019, only a few months before COVID-19 put all “live” concert programming on hold.

Bach’s appearance on last night’s program was limited to a single concerto without any “holiday” connotations. This was the BWV 1042 violin concerto in E major with Elizabeth Blumenstock performing as soloist. This offering was probably the most familiar selection of the evening, but there was much to be said for returning to a favorite concerto performed by a favorite soloist.

Indeed, the only “seasonal” selection of the evening may well have been the least known to much, if not all, of the audience. This was the sixth concerto grosso in G minor from Giuseppe Torelli’s Opus 8, a collection of twelve pieces collected under the title Concerti grossi con una pastorale per il Santissimo Natale. This particular concerto grosso was the pastorale, which featured two solo violin parts, performed last night by Kati Kyme and Chloe Kim. My guess is that this was the least familiar work on last night’s program, but it definitely made for an engaging journey of discovery.

While most of the program was scored only for strings, both of the concertos by Georg Philipp Telemann, performed during the second half of the program, shifted attention to the oboe and the trumpet. The respective soloists on these instruments were Marc Schachman (my first encounter with his engaging performance technique since his retirement from the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra) and Dominic Favia. These were also the only two selections to follow the four-movement structure (slow-fast-slow-fast), rather than the fast-slow-fast organization that remained popular in the years after the Baroque period. While the full complement of VoM string players could not have been in better form, the Telemann concertos provided a refreshing shift in the breadth of sonorities.

The program began with two concertos by Antonio Vivaldi. The first of these involved another departure from the string section. Co-Artistic Director Hanneke van Proosdij served as soloist in the opening selection, the RV 444 concerto in C major for “flautino,” the Italian name for the sopranino recorder (the highest-pitched instrument in the recorder family). This concerto was coupled with the RV 317 solo violin concerto in G minor with YuEun Gemma Kim as soloist.

Taken as a whole, this was a high-spirited account of impressively virtuoso compositions to celebrate the beginning of a full season of Voices of Music performances.