A band of seven from the New York City based ensemble of historical performance specialists led by Rachell Ellen Wong and David Belkovskithrilled the Newport Classical audience gathered in the gilded age Breakers Mansion for Wednesday night’s seventh concert of the acclaimed summer festival. Wong and Belkovski are products of Juilliard’s Historical Performance program, which began with the period instrument ensemble known as Juilliard 415, founded in 2009 by violinist and early music specialist Monica Huggett. Juilliard 415 brought in the world’s leading proponents of historically informed performance practice to lead the ensemble, which has toured around the world. From that vast treasure trove of talent, collaborators Wong and Belkovski in 2021 founded Twelfth Night. The group takes its name from Shakespeare’s play of the same name and “strives to invoke a spirit of boundless revelry, celebration, and community in their programming.” (~from the program notes)
To that end, the performing forces, which included two violins, viola, cello, bass, harpsichord and theorbo, performed with a raw energy, fiery passion, and unbounded freedom to the likes of Vivaldi, Handel, and other Baroque luminaries. Far from the staid conventions of “classical” convention, these interpretations showed a bold exuberance more common to folk revelries than classical concerts. Yet harpsichordist Belkovski pronounced that the group was indeed thrilled to be able to perform in the lavash gilded age hall of the Breakers Mansion, proclaiming that Vivaldi wrote his music to played in halls of such splendid opulence, with its accompanying resonant acoustic.
Having two continuo instruments was a treat to hear. Belkovski’s two manual harpsichord offered subtle contrasts between the two manuals, especially when combined with the gentle sounds of the theorbo, a large lute-like instrument with a most discreet sound. One had to attune one’s ears to the quieter sounds of these instruments, against the piercing resonance of the strings of the ensemble. Though lacking a larger ensemble for the concerted works, the group managed to convey the sense of a fuller orchestra (called the ripieno) merely by the unbridled boldness of their attacks, contrasting this with the solo ‘concertato’ sections more delicately played with lighter and shorter bow strokes.
This served especially well for the more symphonic offerings of Vivaldi’s Sinfonia from his opera L’Olimpiade RV 725, the program opener, the enigmatic, but also virtuosic and highly spirited Violin Concerto in E Minor RV 278, which featured co-leader Rachell Ellen Wong as soloist, and Handel’s Concerto Grosso in A Minor Op. 6 No. 4 HWV 322. Other works on the program featured three other composers perhaps less well known to us, but who were luminaries in their day, and well known to Bach who was inspired by their works and even transcribed some of them. Two of these – Georg Philipp Telemann, Johann Friederich Fasch – were considered ahead of Bach as candidates for the coveted position at Leipzig that Bach eventually acceded to, while the third, Johann Georg Pisendel was a rather famous violinist, eventually becoming concertmaster of the Dresden court orchestra he was long associated with. Bach and Vivaldi along with many other composers wrote concertos for him, but he was also a composer in his own right, with the short and often darkly colored Sonata in C Minor being of particular interest in the evening’s offerings. From the prolific Telemann came the Sonata in A Minor from the so-called Frankfurt Sonatas, just before his final move to Hamburg, and from Fasch the Sonata in D Minor for 2 violins, viola and basso continuo FWV N: d3. All the works that Twelfth Night chose to perform showed sharp contrasts between slow, dark passages, interrupted by very fast and often violent movements.
Nowhere was this more apparent than in the final work of the evening, the famous bass line known as La folia that has been set to variations by numerous composers from the Baroque era to modern times. While the most famous of these is undoubtedly the long set by Baroque violin virtuoso Arcangelo Corelli, the set chosen to close this evening’s performance was by Vivaldi, titled as his Trio Sonata in D Minor Op. 1 No. 12 in nine scintillating and enchanting movements. Bold, often brusque, always brilliant, this was an exciting finish to a vision that Twelfth Night describes as a past imbued with the “exciting, bold colors of the current” creating what in their own words goes “toward the future, which these days seems to be equal parts uncertain and exciting. Our music breathes with the admiration we have for history and the unabashed love for the art world today.”
Newport Classical Festival continues this week with a number of performances by the resident Festival Artists, Third Coast Percussion, The Gesualdo Six, soprano Karen Slack’s stunning presentation of African Queens – a stunning representation of the African story-telling genres by American composers with many new works co-commissioned by seven major American festivals including Newport Classical (Saturday July 12), and the and on Sunday the Australian guitar duo Ziggy and Miles (WQXR Best New Album 2023) followed by the world premiere of indigenous cellist and composer Cris Derksen’s First Light – named for the Wampanoag of Rhode Island – known as “People of the First Light”, commissioned by Newport Classical for the festival and performed by the Galvin Cello Quartet, whose members come from Brazil, South Korea, and the United States. View details of the full season HERE.