In addition to its work as an orchestra, Mark Duley's Christ Church Baroque is starting to promote early music concerts on a smaller scale. The first of these, entitled "Apollo's Lyre: The violin in the 17th century", was given at Christ Church Cathedral last Saturday by Judy Tarling (violin) and Peter Holman (chamber organ), both of whom are members of the British early music ensemble, The Parley of Instruments.
The programme was clearly intended as instructional, illustrating the exploratory style of Italian composers in the first half of the 17th century (Marini, Notari, Uccellini, Castello, Matteis) and contrasting it with the developments of the second half (Dobel, Schmelzer, Finger, Biber); two solo organ pieces, a Voluntary by Benjamin Rogers (onetime organist at Christ Church Cathedral) and a Fantasia by Froberger, were thrown in for good measure.
The often florid, quasi-improvisational style of much of this music calls for particular skills of projection from violinists as well as a finely-developed skill in balancing the very different elements of unpredictability and logic.
"Wacky" was a word which surfaced more than once in the spoken introductions, but the adventurousness of spirit it was intended to convey was rarely meaningfully heightened in playing where the sparks rarely flew, and the rhetorical freedom of the music was often confined.
