Suite No 2 in B minor (BWV1067) - Bach
Violin Concerto in E (BWV1042) - Bach
Oboe d'amore Concerto in A (after BWV1055) - Bach
Brandenburg Concerto No 4 (BWV1049) - Bach
The 250th anniversary of J.S. Bach's death occurred last Friday. That night at the National Concert Hall, the Orchestra of St Cecilia and conductor Geoffrey Spratt presented a programme of this composer's orchestral music. This concert was enjoyable and always respectable. Yet it also showed that pitfalls abound when musicians who are not specialists in historical performance practice play with some awareness of such practice, using modern instruments.
There was no want of rhythmic animation. Yet the detached, precise articulation tended to work against rhythmic drive. On modern instruments such articulation tends to sound choppy unless everyone has a long-range view of where each phrase is leading. Against those limitations must be set the playing of an alert continuo group and the good balance among the 13 string players and the soloists.
In the Suite No. 2 in B minor (BWV1067), flautist William Dowdall produced impeccable tone and was only just the most prominent member in an ensemble of equals. That was also true of Elaine Clarke in the Violin Concerto in E (BWV1042), though the contrapuntal complexity of this piece made it more vulnerable than any other to the concert's general rhythmic limitations.
Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 can easily sound too hectic when played on modern instruments. The good judgment shown by Elaine Clarke and flautists Madeleine Staunton and Catriona Ryan, in balancing the three solo parts, helped make this one of the most convincing performances of the evening.
Nevertheless, the most striking solo playing came from Matthew Manning in the Oboe d'amore Concerto in A, reconstructed back to its lost original version from Bach's own arrangement for harpsichord (BWV1055). Long-phrased, and with a true understanding of the relationship between ornamental and fundamental figuration, Manning's playing made disputes about historical performance seem irrelevant.
