Review: VIVALDI: DIVINE AND DASTARDLY Was Filled With Pleasant Surprises

Reviewed by Ewart Shaw, Sunday 30th August 2015

Ensemble Galante presented their concert, Vivaldi: Divine and Dastardly, in St Johns Church Halifax Street.

In the ninety or so years since the rediscovery of his music, much has been said about Antonio Vivaldi, not all of it complimentary. To the charge that he didn't write three hundred concerti but the same concerto three hundred times, one has to say, there's a grain of truth. His musical vocabulary, his favoured structure, the fast-slow-fast three movement template, best exemplified in the popular mind by The Four Seasons; all this is true and expected.

However, within that strict structure, he made many, many variations, especially in the way he wrote for various solo instruments and combinations. He had an orphanage full of young women, whose musical talents he nurtured, and a need to give them new works to extend and display their talents. Bach wrote hundreds of cantatas, and no one complains about the number of those. Bach actually acquired, borrowed, stole and arranged some of Vivaldi's music.

Ensemble Galante chose a handful of his concerti, an operatic aria, and a solo motet to show off Vivaldi's skill and did it with an understated grace that left me with one of my most memorable musical moments of this year, and possibly this decade. I'll get to that.

In this assembly the ensemble consists of three violins, all gut strung, led by Luke Dollman with Emily Dollman and Sarah King beside him, Anna Webb on viola, Hilary Kleinig 'cello and Glenys March, harpsichord. They were joined by Tim Nott on traverse flute, Jackie Hansen on baroque bassoon, and the voice of Bethany Hill. Gut strung violins are authentically baroque, made from sheep gut not cat, and maybe there's an opening for a cottage industry in South Australia as they have to be imported from a handful of makers overseas. The woodwinds, especially in the case of the flutes, are actually made of wood.

The bassoon, often disregarded as a solo instrument, was the second most frequent solo instrument in Vivaldi's catalogue. It has a softer sound than the current instrument, and a diffident character. It came across in Jackie Hansen's performance of the A minor concerto RV 497 with a genuine and gentle timbre. In the concerto for 'cello and bassoon, in E minor RV 409, it tagged along behind the 'cello of Hilary Kleinig, like the not so agile friend trying to keep up with the more athletic leader.

Luke Dollman led the ensemble in Il sospetto for violin, strings and continuo, RV 199 with the bassoon joining the continuo group, which was in the more than capable hands of Glenys March. Tim Nott was the exceptionally elegant flautist in RV 437, in G major.

Bethany Hill has impressed me as a mezzo soprano but, under her teacher Cheryl Pickering's guidance, she is developing a voice of great character and range. Her performance of the solo motet O Qui Coeli Terraeque Serenitas in E flat RV 631 was memorable for beauty of tone and expression.

It was her earlier piece that will remain in my mind, and not just for the beauty of her singing or the chance to hear an aria from one of Vivaldi's still relatively unknown operas. Vivaldi's Orlando Furioso, based on an episode from the Ariosto epic of the same name, is more familiar in Handel's setting Alcina.

The aria Sol da te, mio dolce amore sings, it's a pretty much a standard trope of the period, that the lover's eyes are the stars that guide the singer to a safe harbor. It opens with the flute stating the melody and here, believe me, Tim Nott produced a sound, beautiful, gentle, seductive and so exquisitely managed, to be completely transporting. The aria was wonderfully sung by Bethany Hill, but I'll never forget those opening bars.

The church has a great acoustic and an ensemble of this scale fills it easily. You owe it to yourself to hear them at their next appearance, either when they join others on October 18th to open the new Ngeringa Cultural Centre, or at St John's, or wherever, and if the programme says that Tim Nott is performing anywhere, you have to go.

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