NICOLA
BENEDETTI Bridgewater Hall
NICOLA
Benedetti last played The Four Seasons in the Bridgewater Hall just a year ago,
guesting with Manchester Camerata in a performance which I found very
rewarding. This time she was with her own little group – her cellist partner
Leonard Elschenbroich among them – on a tour called Italy And The Four Seasons.
Vivaldi’s
scene-painting music was as charming as ever: stylistically in tune with the
latest ideas and highly imaginative. Birds chirruped, dogs barked, teeth chattered
… and though it didn’t beat the best concert version of the music I’ve ever
heard (by the Academy of Ancient Music, here five years ago), it was very good.
This was a
chamber music concert, really, with just 11 musicians at the most on stage
alongside Nicola and Leonard, and the hall is good for that. Their softest
playing was a mere whisper, their imitative effects completely free and
sometimes surprising, their fastest music simply furious.
It was
interesting to hear the solo cello line coming out more strongly than you often
do – but then, why not? There’s almost a duo piece to be heard in The Four
Seasons if you listen for it.
Dropping
the other listed Vivaldi concerto from the programme, Nicola Benedetti then
introduced a superb little ensemble of National Children’s Orchestra string
players from around the region, who shone like real stars in a movement from
the Vivaldi G major concerto.
The second
part of the concert included some really new music – Duetti D’Amore, by
Mark-Anthony Turnage, written for Benedetti and Elschenbroich and getting its
first performances on this tour, which began a week ago. This was its world
cinquieme, if you want to be precise about it.
For violin
and cello alone, its five brief sections are captivating, easy on the ear and
at times hugely effective and haunting. I wondered just how it might work for a
duo who weren’t committed to each other in a love relationship … but that’s a
question for another day. This playing, especially in the tender dialogue of
the fourth movement, was very beautiful. And the ‘Blues’ finale, wittily
bringing audible discord to the forefront, was exciting and, in the end,
completely unified.
The concert
finished with four string players back on stage with Benedetti and
Elschenbroich to play the original sextet version of Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir De
Florence. If there had been any doubts as to the scope of these musicians’
sympathies in successfully turning from baroque to high Romantic style, they
disappeared in seconds. It was glorious to hear, superbly balanced and voiced,
passionate and thrilling and finally pure eloquence and fun.
****
Robert
Beale
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