An all-Vivaldi program is a tricky proposition. The
Four Seasons notwithstanding, the listening public is apt to regard an evening of Vivaldi concertos with a certain skepticism, as half-remembered jibes about "the same concerto written 500 times" float to the mental surface.
As it happens, concocting a Vivaldi program bristling with variety and excitement is dead easy, as long as you avail yourself of the wildly scored ensemble concertos clustered toward the end of the Ryom (RV) Catalog. Philharmonia has done programs centered around those kitchen-sink extravaganzas before (and recorded several, on the Reference label). But doing the same with only a few solo instruments is more difficult. In Saturday's concert at Berkeley's First Congregational Church, the orchestra and guest leader/violin soloist Monica Huggett pulled it off with panache.
Scott Metcalfe's excellent program note quoted Vivaldi scholar Michael Talbot to the effect that it is much easier to be sure you are hearing a Vivaldi concerto than to be certain which one it is. All the same, this program might have been designed to demonstrate that the "Vivaldi profile" is deceptively capacious. Four of Saturday's six works (three for violin, one for oboe) belong to the set of six published by the Amsterdam-based publisher Le Cène as Op. 11 in 1729, while a fifth, for violin and oboe, has only a manuscript source. Tucked in among them was the familiar A-Minor two-violin concerto (RV 522) from
L'Estro armonico, Vivaldi's Op. 3.
Lesser-Known Gems
Huggett is to be thanked not only for programming a lot of seriously unfamiliar Vivaldi — the Op. 11 concertos are hardly ever played — but also for providing a point of reference in one much-played chestnut. RV 522, like everything in Op. 3, is full of fanciful solo excursions, but in Saturday's company the most striking things about it were its balance and its meticulous design.
The Op. 11 concertos have a remarkable looseness, almost a largesse, of construction, throwing all manner of striking material at the listener and not bothering overmuch about taut organization. Were they longer than they are, they might be described as sprawling. As it is, they are if anything too short to connect up everything within them, and they dazzle through bewilderment as much as brilliance. By their side, RV 522's rational regularity seemed almost prim.
There were striking differences of character among the Op. 11 pieces. No. 1 in D (RV 207) had the textural brightness Vivaldi tended to emphasize in that key, full of open strings and flashy string-crossings, and with a delightful pizzicato-accompanied slow movement. The A-Major No. 3 (RV 336) had textural curiosities of its own, most notably a finale in which the fast fingerwork was all in the solo and the bass line, with the orchestral violins playing long legato lines in the ritornellos.
The first movement of the same work contains some harmonic jolts that sounded not so much deliberately shocking as inconsequent. (At one point, the music cadences strongly in a fairly remote key and then is blithely reset back to A major, somewhat as though Vivaldi had composed himself into a corner and had to fudge his way back out.)
In the C-Minor No. 5 (RV 202), on the other hand, the harmonic shocks are plainly deliberate. This is a great snarling beast of a concerto — strenuous, grim, relentlessly serious in demeanor, yet also intensely imaginative. This is difficult music, and not just for the fingers. Huggett and the Philharmonia players, who cannily put this one last on the program, ripped into it with fervor.
Powerful Singing Lines
Huggett made a fine champion for her three concertos. Hers is an unusually full and powerful sound for a Baroque violinist, one that relies on bow speed more than on bow placement or pressure. She has, too, a great repertoire of articulative tricks, including a kind of well-off-the-string, pecking staccato that she used several times to brilliant effect. In the arialike slow movements she "sang" with a diva's artfulness, inflecting her lines insinuatingly with the bow.
But in the singing department, Philharmonia oboist Gonzalo Ruiz was her equal and more. He played the other Op. 11 concerto, the G-Minor No. 6 (RV 460), with an uncommonly and consistently beautiful tone, not to mention a jaw-dropping fluency and ease. As befits the instrument, RV 460 is less hectic in its decoration than its violin siblings, but the notes still come at a blistering pace. Ruiz spun them off with the kind of nonchalant brilliance I've only rarely heard from a "modern" oboist, and I don't think I’ve ever witnessed in a Baroque player. And his breath control was marvelous; in the outer movements the streams of notes seemed almost impossibly continuous.
Ruiz and Huggett joined forces in the B-flat Major double concerto RV 548, a cleverly designed piece in which the two instruments trade material at key points, while elsewhere diverge subtly to suit their respective strengths. Huggett delivered her part with customary dash, but in the outer movements I fancied Ruiz and his zingy oboe had the better of the argument. The slow movement was all his, an oboe
siciliana to which Huggett contributed a delicate pizzicato accompaniment.
For RV 522, the violin soloists were Philharmonia's Carla Moore and Jolianne von Einem. They made a fine team, complementary rather than identical, with Moore on balance stressing the sparks and von Einem the suavity. A long solo passage in the finale, with von Einem's flowing cantabile floating over Moore's sharply articulated string crossings, seemed to sum up their respective personas.
The Philharmonia strings followed Huggett's lead and example avidly throughout the program, bringing depth of sound as well as brilliance to the full-ensemble passages. The only (slight) sour notes came in the slow movements of RV 460 and RV 336, in which the viola bass line that is the soloist's only accompaniment was not quite so unanimous as it might have been.
After the astonishing RV 202, an encore was inevitable. There being no Vivaldi concerto for three violins and oboe, the players did the next-best thing and gave us a sparkling performance of the last movement of Vivaldi's sole three-violin concerto, the F-Major RV 551. It was a reassuring return to more "normal" Vivaldi, and a bright conclusion to a vivid and variegated concert.