The concert hall was too large, the chamber music hall too small for the ensemble of Musica Gloria in the Bruges Concertgebouw, but that one was packed to the rafters! And all for what seemed like a competition between Corelli and Händel from the program. A competition exemplarily conducted by the duo Beniamino Paganini and Nele Vertommen, the two mainstays of Musica Gloria, an ensemble full of young talent where, as is often the case in the classical world, mainly older people came to listen….
The concert began with Arcangelo Corelli ("archangel", his violin playing sounded so heavenly that his contemporaries thought so). A trio sonata for two violins and cello. Beniamino Paganini himself provided the continuo on harpsichord together with theorbo player Giulio Quirici and cellist Evan Butter. That harpsichord deserves a word of explanation because it was "not quite" ordinary: it was a claviorgan. It is an ingenious construction, a combination of a small organ and a harpsichord, with two keyboards. An instrument that was known in those times and necessary if you want to play both an organ concerto and a harpsichord suite. Both were on the program and Beniamino Paganini mastered the double instrument completely and with flair. After a trio sonata for oboe by Händel, with an excellent Nele Vertommen (not for nothing a pupil of Marcel Ponseele) followed a harpsichord suite by the British-German master on this rather strange and beautiful claviorgan. And again Nele Vertommen and the entire ensemble with an oboe concerto by Händel. And then it was Corelli's turn again with his version of La Folia, that famous and wickedly tricky 'little song', light-footed but devilishly difficult to play.
The joy of playing radiated from those young musicians' faces. Beautifully and with such force that the instruments had to be retuned with great care. Nice to hear that Corelli is being taken up again after those concerti grossi had somewhat fallen into oblivion as 'background music' and for me and many of my generation evoked the musical wallpaper of the Christmas atmosphere. But do listen to that trio sonata "con aboé": Nele Vertommen was able to skillfully expand and display her knowledge and expertise of the oboe on this special and old instrument that hangs somewhere between a shawm and a baroque oboe, with a larger bell and a sharper, harder sound.
And when you want to talk about concerti grossi and Händel, an organ concerto by him cannot be missing and Musica Gloria brought that nice work with the nickname "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale", full of dialogue between the instrument groups, as it should be in a concerto grosso, including the little bird whistle that was supposed to imitate the nightingale. Were we now hearing a perfect ensemble under the direction of Beniamino Paganini, who was elected Musician of the Year 2020 in 2021 by the members of the Belgian Music Press? In any case, we heard a perfectly happy ensemble! An encore? A short piece by Geminiani with a, this time on recorder, brilliant Nele Vertommen, who in 2020 was also on the long list of the same prize from the Music Press. That this association could not have made a better choice at the time was amply confirmed with this concert.
WHO: Musica Gloria conducted by Beniamino Paganini (claviorgan) and Nele Vertommen (oboe) and furthermore
Elise Dupont and Daria Spiridonova (violin), Lena Rademann (viola), Evan Butter (cello) and Giulio Quirici (theorbo and guitar).
And Markus Harder-Völkmann: Claviorgan instrument construction
WHAT: Arcangelo Corelli (Triosonates opus 1 and 3, sonata con Aboé and La Folia opus 5)
Georg Friedrich Händel (Trio Sonata HWV390, Harpsichord Suite HWV428, Oboe Concerto HWV287, Organ Concerto HWV295, The Cuckoo and the Nightingale and the "adagio" from the overture "Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno" HWV46a)
WHERE: Chamber Music Hall Concertgebouw Brugge, Friday, March 4, 2022