OAE
Boyd Tonkin
How do you make a venerable warhorse frisk like a coltish show-pony? Hire William Christie as the trainer. In a performance of scintillating drama and crystal-clear definition, the past master of Baroque revival and re-invention coaxed the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and its thoroughbred choir across all the tricky fences on Handel’s long and winding course. At the end of Israel in Egypt, with the Egyptians vanquished and the Israelites freed, the voice of Miriam the prophetess – one of the two soprano solo parts – exhorts her people to “Sing ye to the Lord, for he has triumphed Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
William Christie chose a suitably light and breezy programme for this warm summer evening’s concert at St. John’s Smith Square. The concert was titled “Bach goes to Paris”, with works chosen to highlight the connections between the German master and his French contemporaries. But, more significantly, they showcased Christie’s deep affinity with French Baroque music, and the vibrancy and passion he brings to this repertoire.For Christie, Baroque music is always about dance, so it was fitting that much of this music derived from ballet. Christie gestures broadly from the podium, but rarely to Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Tradition – a choral spectacular for the penultimate night of the Proms – but with a twist – a youth choir and period instruments. Marin Alsop this evening led a spectacular Verdi Requiem, not least for the sheer scale of the chorus, the BBC Proms Youth Choir some 200 strong. The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment provided chacterful accompaniment, though sometimes struggled to compete, and the four soloists all delivered, particularly Tamara Wilson, here confirming her reputation as one of today’s leading Verdi sopranos.The BBC Proms Youth Choir brings together four youth choruses from Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Between the Berlin Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and Simón Bolivar Symphony Orchestra it has been a big week at the Proms, in every sense. Scope and scale have been the watchwords for the orchestral tectonics that have taken place, the sonic landscapes that have been formed and reformed. But concert-goers on Sunday night were hit with an operatic aftershock of overwhelming force, bringing this penultimate Proms week to a close next weekend’s patriotic spectacular will struggle to match.Rarely staged in the UK, Rossini’s Semiramide, like Verdi’s Il Trovatore, is an opera you only Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
It is interesting to note how, in the space of a few short decades, so-called “period instrument” performances of classical music have moved from edgy experimentation to the mainstream of the tradition. In last night’s Prom, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (OAE), born in 1986, was paired with the choir of King’s College Cambridge, tracing its origins back to 1441, to largely happy effect.The programme was dominated by two very different mass settings: Haydn’s Mass in Time of War, marking a period of political uncertainty, and Fauré’s Requiem, offering gentle solace in the face of Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment is 30 years old, and last night it celebrated in style. The orchestra has a long association with the music of Weber, who became iconic of their pioneering work in presenting 19th-century repertoire on period instruments. His greatest work received an impressive performance last night, one that demonstrated the many virtues of their unique approach to the work of the Romantics. But it wasn’t all a success, and was let down by a surprisingly modest staging concept from the usually ambitious David Pountney.The music of the opera is framed by Pountney in Read more ...
Eric Richmond
When I was first commissioned by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment I never dreamed that it would turn into a marriage of such long duration. The length and breadth of the collaboration has lasted over 20 years now, and long may it continue. It has afforded me the opportunity to get to know many of the players, which as time passes allows for an intimacy and trust that's very rare in photography, a profession which, like the proverbial shark, requires constant forward movement.Some of the musicians have been in front of the camera since the very first shoot back in 1996, some have Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
It’s always fun to watch the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. As members of a self-governing orchestra, and often soloists in their own right, the players like to do things their way. Come the ripe second theme of the Bruckner Adagio and the cellos were giving it lashings of vibrato; muesli-wearing adherents to pure tone be damned. So were six of the eight basses ranged across the back of the Royal Festival Hall stage. That just left two basses, left-hand fingers resolutely unmoved. They weren’t going to vibrate for Bruckner, for Sir Simon Rattle or for anybody.There are many positive Read more ...
David Nice
A concert of Brahms chamber music I could understand, especially given a balance between early and late. An evening of orchestral Brahms, with or without voices, needs much more special pleading. It didn’t get nearly enough last night. An expanded Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, including nine very vigorous double basses – where did the extra players come from? – failing to bite into the wide spaces as smaller ensembles like the Chamber Orchestra of Europe have so splendidly done before it, and a conductor without the right sense of breathing in melody or forward momentum both weighed Read more ...
David Nice
What a difference seven years can make to a budding genius. Mozart’s La finta giardiniera (1775) has only patches of brilliance, and last year’s Glyndebourne production, despite musical excellence, failed them all. This time an experienced director on best form, David McVicar, finds more nuanced humanity in the composer’s first mature German drama, Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio, 1782) than I’d have believed possible, mirrored in the light and fire of Glyndebourne Music Director Robin Ticciati and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. If you think Mozart’s Read more ...
graham.rickson
CPE Bach: Symphonies Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment/Rebecca Miller (Signum)Think of musical perfection and you think of JS Bach. Every note perfectly placed, every harmonic sequence pleasing in its logic, every extended structure immaculately organised. Crucially, Bach's music never sounds boring or dutiful. You wonder what facial expressions he'd have pulled when listening to these five symphonies composed by his second son Carl Philipp Emmanuel, whose career blossomed during a 28-year spell under the employ of Frederick the Great in Berlin. They're all three-movement works, Read more ...
David Nice
As I sat, engaged and occasionally charmed but not always as impressed as I’d been told I would be, through violinist-animateur Richard Tognetti’s lightish seven-course taster menu of string music with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, it was worth bearing two things in mind. One was that this happened to be merely the official zenith of a truly enlightened three-part project; on Monday, parts of the programme had been played first to educate all ages and later to grab a young audience in more relaxed mode as part of the OAE’s pioneering Night Shift series. The other qualification Read more ...