On Stage: Jean-Guihen Queyras & the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin
Berlin Philharmonic Kammermusiksaal; October 25, 2011
It’s easy to play Vivaldi badly.
It’s difficult to make Vivaldi exciting.
And there are few ensembles in the world that can make Vivaldi really exciting.
The Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin is one of them.
The Berliners put on a slick show at the Berlin Philharmonic Kammermusiksaal, performing one Vivaldi concerto after another, with Canadian cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras as guest soloist.
How could they go wrong?
They all play at Baroque pitch, with Baroque bows, and derive lots of energy from rhythmically precise, finely articulated playing nuanced by altering bow speed and bow pressure.
What comes through then is the colors of Vivaldi’s harmonic changes—vividly, and with evident enjoyment (the musicians frequently exchanged smiles).
Even the motoric rhythms of “sewing machine” passage work emerged with a sense of something truly alive, organic, and always growing.
Queyras soloed in five concertos, playing a spikeless cello with a pointy Baroque bow. His performance was spotless. In the Cello Concertos in F major (RV 412), G minor (RV 416), and A minor (RV 419), he showed just how freely a soloist can play when totally unencumbered by technical difficulty: rubatos dictated by the musical rhetoric, bravura ascending runs in 16ths that took flight, earthy stabs of the bow at the heel in rapid string-crossing, and big virtuoso cadences ending with the whole bow in an up bow. In the slow movements the melodies rang out with unforced purity, often in a sensitive and intimate dialogue with lutenist Simon Martyn-Ellis.
Dialogue was also the reigning principle in the two double concertos, in which Queyras paired up with Christian Beuse on bassoon (RV 409) and with Xenia Löffler on oboe (RV 812). Beautifully refined playing like this, unpretentious and so relaxed, takes years of training and experience to achieve.
Under the direction of Georg Kallweit, the ensemble also performed works by Antonio Caldara (a contemporary of Vivaldi’s) and other works by Vivaldi, including the Triple Concerto RV 565, in which Kallweit was joined by Dörte Wetzel (second violin) and Jan Freiheit (cello). Always precise, with an ear for colors and textures (and the occasional improvisando flourish). this is exactly how Vivaldi should be played.
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