Adelaide Baroque An Ungrateful Instrument

Burnside Town Hall August 20th & 21st
21st 2024

This concert was an interesting collaboration between an author – Michael Meehan – and the Adelaide Baroque players. The 17th/18th century viola da gamba players, father, Antoine & son, Jean Baptiste Forqueray, are the subjects of the novel. Based on historical facts, the story is about the violent relationship of these 2 men and the music they played.

So the musicians recreated this story in music. It was an adventure!

The readings from the book by Michael Meehan depicted various stages of their lives and the pieces matched them. The violent piece ‘Jupiter’ by Antoine set the mood and a 2nd piece by him from a Suite also demonstrated his forceful, overwhelming character and music. The 2 gamba players, Laura Vaughan and Catherine Finnis, accompanied by Simon Martyn-Ellis on theorbo and Katrina Brown Harpsichord captured the aggressive passion of his music with precision and conviction.

Contemporaries of this amazing era in Versailles were also represented. A Prelude by Marin Marais, a teacher of Forqueray senior, was lyrically played by the same group; gentle music in comparison! A Couperin harpsichord tribute to Forqueray was a showpiece for the harpsichordist. Prelude by Charpentier was sensitively played by a string quartet, Ben Dollman, & Alison Rayner violins, Heidi von Bernewitz viola and Laura Vaughan gamba. Again a beautiful blend of sound and a different timbre.

Orchestral items by Rameau and Lully were played by the whole ensemble, the recorder/oboe players Kailen Cresp & Brendan O’Donnell contrasting well with the strings and Thomas Marlin cello, Robert Nairn violone and Jackie Newcomb bassoon added that rich bass that fills out the ensemble sound. The precision and drive of the orchestra brought this varied, interesting and innovative concert to a
close.

The performance was accompanied by moving images suggesting Baroque motives created by Dave Court. This modern idea of having a visual aspect to music appeals to some, others find it distracting and unnecessary – no doubt the audience was divided on that subject. But this joint venture between a writer of a novel with a music history theme and a performance of the music mentioned in the book was an excellent idea and it inspired a wonderful concert.

Gabrielle Scherrer