SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

The programme notes for this concert devoted to suites and concertos to Bach and his contemporaries started off with a warning. Not all the works would be performed in the manner their composers originally conceived them.  However during the Baroque period musicians were accustomed to making changes to the instrumentation as the occasion demanded, and even the great J S Bach was not averse to revising and reworking his ideas.

Dismas Zelenka's festive Cavalry Fanfare, which opened the programme, was probably  performed without modification. However, the next work, Gottfried Heinrich Stoelzel's  Concerto a quattro chori became a Concerto a tre chori in the absence of a fourth trumpeter - not that it made much difference. I suspect such changes were common in the royal court at Dresden where both Zelenka and Stoelzel were employed as musicians. Stoelzel was a highly regarded composer in his time and the Concerto proved to be a lively and engaging affair with some spirited playing from trumpeters Steve Bailey, Dominic Cotton and Chris Bunn, especially in the introductory movement.

The trumpeters then ceded pride of place to the strings and woodwind for the third set of Telemann's Tafelmusik. Telemann, it appears was a commercially astute composer, who set out to appeal to the middle class of his time. The Tafelmusik was a sequence of relatively undemanding, but pleasing, short pieces and Warwick Cole, conducting from the harpsichord succeeded in capturing the charm of the music.

Georg Boehm is thought to have been Bach's teacher in Lueneburg and judging from his Suite in D major he was no mean composer, too. His six movement Suite was actually published as a keyboard work but there is sufficient evidence that this is a transcription of a work for orchestra. So the resourceful Corelli players decided to restore it to what was felt to be its original form.

Whether the composer would have recognised the work in this guise is a moot point, but it was surely well worth  the effort. The music proved very satisfying and the inclusion of a flute in such movements as the Air, Rigaudon and the Minuet was the icing on the cake.

 The musicians then moved on to more familiar territory with Vivaldi's Concerto for two violins in A minor. There was some expressive playing from soloists Ben Samson and Kelly McCusker in the elegiac Larghetto, and they they struck a more declamatory pose in the dramatic and virtuosic finale.

Finally it was the turn of Bach himself. The trumpet players returned, with a timpanists, for a performance of Bach's popular Suite No. 3. After the jubilant Ouverture the strings took over to give a haunting rendition of the famous Air. The two Gavottes were played with an engaging robustness, and a cheerful Gigue rounded off the concert.

This proved to be a highly satisfactory evening performed by an experienced  conductor and ensemble who are not afraid to turn off the main highways of Baroque music to explore some of the byways as well.

Roger Jones