VoM Closes Season with Diverse Concertos

Last night Voices of Music (VoM) concluded its 2023–2024 concert season with a program whose full title was Virtuoso Concertos: Music of Vivaldi, Bach & Telemann. Both of the latter composers were represented by only a single selection on the program, and the one for Johann Sebastian Bach was not even a concerto! Rather, it was the opening Sinfonia movement from the BWV 42 cantata Am Abend aber desselbigen Sabbats (on the evening, however, of the same Sabbath).

Hanneke van Proosdij taking her bow after performing a Telemann concerto (courtesy of Voices of Music)

The concerto by Georg Philipp Telemann was particularly distinctive, however, because it provided Director Hanneke van Proosdij to depart from her harpsichord bench and take up her recorder. TWV 51:F1 is a concerto for that instrument, and its second (Allegro) movement almost literally sparkled with an abundance of virtuoso turns. Many of us first came to know music through the “simplicity” of a recorder; but there is no dismissing its role in the history of early music. Furthermore, because it is an early instrument, the command of those virtuoso passages must be met with not only intricate fingerwork but also scrupulous breath control. Proosdij could not have been a better “commander” in her account of Telemann’s score.

The remaining five selections on the program were all concertos by Antonio Vivaldi. While I did not need any reminder of how prolific Vivaldi was, I still had to make note of the fact that, in my listening experience, all five of those concertos were “first encounters.” Two of those concertos tend to be seldom performed because they were composed for winds, and each half of the program had one of those concertos. 

The first of these was the RV 535 concerto for two oboes in D minor, performed by Marc Schachman and Pablo O’Connell, and it served up just the right balance between playing together and exchanging motifs. In the second half Schachman performed with bassoonist Andrew Schwartz to present the RV 545 concerto in G major. This may well have been my first encounter with virtuoso music performed on a baroque bassoon, and the sonorities of that concerto could not have been more engaging. The two oboists also returned as soloists for the final concerto, RV 557 in C major, originally composed for two oboes and three violins. This was rearranged so that one of the violin solo parts was taken by recorder, and the middle Largo movement was rescored for mandolin (performed by Director David Tayler) and harpsichord. The other soloist featured during the evening was violinist Augusta McKay Lodge (also serving as concertmaster), playing the RV 728 concerto in E minor.

Taken as a whole, the evening was a thoroughly engaging journey of discovery, emphasizing, once again, that music from the Baroque period was a far cry from “more of the same!”