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Joyful ‘early music’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
MUSIC REVIEW: Atlanta Baroque Orchestra
‘Into the High Woods: the Song of the Oboe’
The ‘authentic performance practice’ revival that began in the 1960s — with some widely disseminated recordings by conductor Nicholas Harnoncourt and keyboardist Gustav Leonhardt, among others — reached its peak in the 1980s.
Vibrato-less playing, gut strings, reduced orchestral forces, and occasionally whiz-bang tempos were, if not exactly commonplace, certainly in vogue on international stages, as applied to works of the Baroque and early Classical Periods.
These days the movement has lost its cache among general audiences, but the hard-core soldier lives on. According to the Boston Early Music Group, there are over 1000 ‘early music’ ensembles in North American alone. The Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, founded in 1997, has come late to the party, but is nonetheless well-qualified to join in the festive jousting.
Centering Saturday night’s program at Oglethorpe University (repeated Sunday afternoon at Peachtree Road United Methodist Church) was Germany-based oboist Matthew Peaceman, in the dual role of soloist and guest conductor of a program airily titled ‘Into the High Woods: the Song of the Oboe.’ (The word ‘oboe’ derives from the French ‘hautbois,’ meaning, literally, high wood.)
Peaceman, an American musician who has earned his reputation primarily abroad, showed himself the consummate craftsman, on both the baroque oboe and its slightly lower cousin, the oboe d’amore – both of which require exquisite breath control and solid technical facility.
Most notable were the long, sinuous curlicues he wrapped sweetly around Judith Overcash’s soprano in J. S. Bach’s ‘Wedding Cantata,’ and the tidy, crisp, well-tuned duets with fellow oboist George Riordan in Tommaso Albinoni’s ‘Concerto a Cinque.’
But it seemed that the evening lost momentum as it progressed. Tuning, so crucial on these highly temperamental instruments, seemed to slip, as did crispness of execution.
That said, there persisted an attractive esprit de corps among these 20 or so musicians, comprising strings, flutes, oboes, bassoon, harpsichord and percussion. Harmonic suspensions were stretched with heartfelt intensity; call-and-response dialog between sections was mutually, wonderfully sensitive. It’s unfortunate that only a tiny audience shared in what was clearly ABO’s own joy in intimate, Baroque music-making.
WHERE: Oglethorpe University, Conant Performing Arts Center, Saturday Jan. 22 at 8 p.m.
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