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Seen and Heard International Concert Review

 


Bach and Vivaldi: Jaime Laredo, cond./violin, soloists, Seattle Symphony, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 13.1.2007 (BJ)

 

 

Divided equally between Bach and Vivaldi, Jaime Laredo’s program of concertos in the Seattle Symphony’s “Basically Baroque” series offered sensitive and often exciting music-making, productive of much pleasure for the unbiased listener. Granted, it was not really an evening calculated to appeal to purists, who may well have been put off by the liberality with which vibrato was allowed to color the string playing.

Even I, though not a fully-paid-up member of the “Historically Informed Performance Practice” lobby, am by now well enough used to hearing the wind parts in the Fourth “Brandenburg” Concerto played on recorders to have found the sonority of modern transverse flutes a bit strange, finely though the orchestra’s Zartouhi Dombourian-Eby and Judy Kriewall played them. I thought, too, that in an ensemble of 23 stringed instruments two basses was one too many, lending a somewhat leaden tone to the foundation of the orchestral tone. But, for the rest, Jaime Laredo is so perceptive, skillful, and indeed charming a musician that I was willing to take the occasional dynamic surge and the generally saturated orchestral textures for what they were worth, which was a great deal in terms of eloquence and dramatic force.

In any case, there was much about the performances of all the six works on the program that did indeed show stylistic awareness, especially in regard to tempo and pulse. Speeds were for the most part lively without descending into caricature–though a few moments of decidedly approximate ensemble (and a few smudged notes) were the price of the conductor-soloist’s willingness to take risks in the interest of entirely appropriate vitality. The first movement of the “
Brandenburg” Concerto No. 3 skipped along in an nimbly articulated alla breve measure, instead of the plodding four-beats-to-the-bar too often inflicted on it, and Bach’s occasional rhetorical touches were given just the right degree of emphasis. Laredo’s solo playing was fluent and at times cliff-hangingly brilliant, particularly in Vivaldi’s Tempesta di mare concerto, in the Fourth “Brandenburg,” and in Bach’s Concerto for Violin and Oboe, in which Ben Hausmann was a sympathetic if at times over-modest partner.

Two other Vivaldi concertos added first one additional violinist and then two to the solo line-up. Acting concertmaster Maria Larionoff matched Laredo thrust for thrust in the powerful A-minor Concerto, RV 522, from L’estro armonico, and in the delightful middle movement of the concluding work, the F-major Concerto for three violins, RV 551, she threw off a splendid sprinkle of pizzicatos alongside the contrasting lines silkily played by Laredo and assistant principal second violin Michael Miropolsky. It was a highly entertaining culmination to an evening of civilized music performed with urbanity and grace.

 

 

Bernard Jacobson

 


 



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