Dame Jane Glover on the podium at the beginning of last night’s DSO live-stream
The title of the latest live-streamed performance by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) yesterday evening was Baroque Fireworks. The Baroque period provided the “core” of the program, followed by the Classical period represented by Joseph Haydn and preceded by the contemporary repertoire of Stacy Garrop. Dame Jane Glover visited to Detroit to take the DSO podium. The title of the program was a direct reference to George Frideric Handel’s HWV 351, a suite in D major entitled Music for the Royal Fireworks.
This could be taken as an “overture,” with Johann Sebastian Bach intervening between Handel and Haydn. The harpsichord continuo for HWV 351 could be seen on the screen; but it was entirely inaudible, overwhelmed by the instrumental ensemble. Nevertheless, Glover gave the suite a spirited account, made all the more engaging by the camera shots of the contributing instrumentalists.
Those high spirits continued in the transition from Handel to Johann Sebastian Bach. He was represented by BWV 1048 in G major, the third of the six “Brandenburg” concertos. As far as I could see from the screen, this was given a one-to-a-part performance of nine musicians: three violins, three violas, and three cellos. The transparency of this account was delightful, providing the most intimate performance of the evening.
This was followed by Joseph Haydn’s final symphony, Hoboken I:104. This is known as the “London” symphony, which is where Haydn was living when he composed it. According to Haydn’s own diary, the premiere performance was a great success, not only in the response by the audience but also through a generous sum of money that he earned from the performance!
These three works were preceded, at the very beginning of the program, by Stacy Garrop’s “Spectacle of Light.” The program notes described this piece as “Handel-inspired;” but that inspiration did not seem to go very far. Garrop was bold enough to work with generously rich instrumentation; but, sadly, neither the instruments or their groupings in different combinations were ever put to convincing use. Fortunately, Garrop’s tedium did not last very long and was followed by a far more convincing collection of music from earlier centuries.
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