Reviewed by Ewart Shaw, Monday 2nd March 2015
Linen is a fabric made from flax, linum usitatissimum, the Latin adjective declaring it 'the most useful fibre'. From it was made the bleached fabric worn by wealthy Dutch citizens in the 16th and 17th centuries. From it, with a thread count of thirty to the inch, was made the canvas on which Vermeer painted those wealthy Dutch citizens, and their servants. Torn, beaten and pulped, the scraps made the paper on which
Henry Purcell wrote the music that King William the Third's musicians played when they returned to Delft, the home of linen weaving, and that popular porcelain patterned in cobalt blue.
House of Dreams is the title, but the subject is the rooms, houses and palaces in which the dreams of music were composed and first performed.
You don't expect to leave a concert of classical music with a heightened understanding of the politics and economics of the period in which the music was written, but this is the Canadian Baroque ensemble, Tafelmusik. Their playing is of such a standard, their commitment to memorising every note is so impressive, that they can add all those historical depths, filling in the background of the lives of the great composers. They are so confident in their skills that they can walk, turn, smile, dance, flirt with each other and the audience, without missing a beat. The ensemble of strings, with two oboes, bassoon, lute and harpsichord, was led for this performance by violinist Leanne Lamon, their chief artistic advisor, and formerly their music director.
While the concept, script and program are the work of Alison Mackay, who is the double bassist in the ensemble, her words are delivered by the affable
Blair Williams.
They begin with Handel and his house, now his museum, in Brook Street in Mayfair, moving to the Venice of Vivaldi, and then to Delft, with a piece by Sweelinck, and music by Purcell, who served the restored Stuarts and Willem of Orange Nassau.
After the interval, the program moved to Paris, and the palatial home of the Duc d'Orleans, in whose private opera house the works of Lully, Rameau and others were premiered. Here we heard a suite from the opera by Marais,
Alcyone. It is the tragic but uplifting tale of the queen Alcyone, who on the drowning death of her husband king Ceix was changed, along with her husband, into a kingfisher, whose god given days of calm waters are still called halcyon days.
The section on Bach actually moved into his neighbour's house, where a family whose wealth came from mining invited him and his family to join them for musical evenings. One of the minerals on which their wealth was based is cobalt, which gives the blue pigment used by Vermeer and is the blue glaze on porcelain made in Delft. A circle closes.
The one challenge in the evening was the music itself. Each composer was represented by a selection of short works often from unrelated longer compositions. Each piece was exquisitely played and recognizable by those instinctive intervals and harmonies as the work of the five major and two less well known composers Sweelinck and Telemann. The audience applauded the works they recognized; a slow movement from a Vivaldi lute concerto, frequently played now on guitar, and the allegro movement of the Bach concerto for two violins, colloquially known as the dark bubble. Missing maybe also from
the concert, a soprano to sing Handel's
Verdi Prati from
Alcina, or
Halcyon Days from
The Tempest by Purcell.
The reprise at the end of
the concert of two pieces by Handel was followed by an encore. The band played the jaunty and drum led
Tambourins from
Alcyone, and the Musica Viva audience, average age, let's be generous, 50, clapped along.
It was a magical event, as instructive as illuminating and as purely enjoyable, and you end up knowing a lot more about flax.
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