The concert hall was too large, the chamber music hall too small for the ensemble Musica Gloria in the Bruges Concertgebouw, but that one was packed to the rafters! And that for a competition between Corelli and Händel, as it seemed from the programme. 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, mostly older people came to listen….
The concert started with that Archangelo ("archangel", his fellow contemporaries found his violin playing so heavenly) Corelli. A trio sonata for two violins and cello. For the continuo, Beniamino Paganini himself provided the harpsichord together with theorbo player Giulio Quirici and cellist Evan Butter. That harpsichord needs a word of explanation because it was not "ordinary": it was a claviorganum. It is an ingenious construction, a combination of an organ positive 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 programme and Beniamino Paganini mastered the double instrument completely and with panache. 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 admittedly strange and beautiful claviorganum. And again Nele Vertommen and the whole ensemble with an oboe concerto by Händel. And then it was Corelli's turn again with his version of La Folia, that well-known and devilishly tricky 'tune', light-footed but devilishly difficult to play.
The joy of playing beamed from those young players' faces. Beautiful and brought with such force that the instruments had to be perfectly retuned with great care. Nice to hear that Corelli is being taken up again after he had somewhat ended up in the back corner of 'table music' with those concerti grossi and for me and many of my generation evokes the musical wallpaper of the Christmas atmosphere. But do listen to that trio sonata "con aboé": Nele Vertommen was able to expand and display her knowledge and skill of the oboe expertly on this special and ancient instrument that hangs somewhere between a shawm and a Baroque oboe, with a larger end bell and sharper and harder sound.
And when you want to talk about concerti grossi and Händel, then an organ concerto by him cannot be missing and Musica Gloria brought that charming work with the nickname "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale", full of dialogue between the instrument groups, as befits a concerto grosso, including the bird whistle that was meant 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 members of the Belgian Music Press? In any case, we heard a perfect happy ensemble! An encore? A short piece by Geminiani with a brilliant Nele Vertommen, this time on recorder, who was also on the long list of the same award from the Music Press in 2020. That the association could not have made a better choice at that time was amply confirmed by this concert.
WHO: Musica Gloria conducted by Beniamino Paganini (claviorganum) 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: Instrument construction claviorganum
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 4 March 2022