Music

Dunedin Consort

CCA, Glasgow

Keith Bruce

****

THE instrumentalists of the Dunedin Consort were already working to a ridiculous schedule when their return flight from the Misteria Paschalia festival in Poland was delayed by several hours, depriving them of half a night’s sleep.

This all-Vivaldi programme – music at a considerable remove from the Handel, Bach and Purcell they were playing there – was rehearsed by leader Cecilia Bernardini in Krakow to be heard in Glasgow, Findhorn and Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall, and the vitality the octet (four violins, viola, cello, bass violone and harpsichord) brought to its performance was little short of miraculous under the circumstances.

Bernardini gave it the title of La Favorita, as most of the music is known to have been written for the composer’s star pupil, Anna Maria, at the Venice orphanage where he worked, and where she remained, as a member of staff herself until her death in her 80s. The violinist joked that the intensive workload of her colleagues and herself over the previous days had been ideal preparation, given the hours of practice demanded of the young women at the Ospedale della Pieta.

As well as her own virtuosity as the programme’s featured soloist, what was striking about Bernardini’s selection of seven concertos was the range of techniques and variation of sound produced by the eight musicians. If the opening “Il Corneto da Posta” concerto immediately sounded startlingly modern, the G Minor Concerto for Strings and Basso Continuo that followed featured a descending bass-line that music-writer Alex Ross has traced from 16th century Spanish dance music to Led Zeppelin’s Dazed and Confused.

A funky, syncopated line from the violone of Carina Cosgrave and cellist Andrew Skidmore underscored the opening movement of the B Minor Violin Concerto that followed, while the intense “Il Riposo” concerto dispensed with the keyboard and revolved around an ascending chromatic figure, played on muted strings.