Vivaldi didn’t write his violin concertos for star soloists – he wrote them for the orphans at the convent where he taught – but there are few better vehicles from that era to show off starry playing. This 18th-century Prom by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment was to have been a showcase for two such performers. With Alina Ibragimova having withdrawn following the death of her father – the double bass player Rinat Ibragimov – the day before, Nicola Benedetti was instead joined by a different OAE violinist for each of three double concertos.
In this slightly surreal setting – the vast hall empty apart from the socially distanced performers on stage and a few shadowy camera operators – the two double violin concertos by Vivaldi were what came over best. Playing on gut strings and with a baroque bow, Benedetti matched her colleagues gesture for stylistic gesture. In the D major concerto, RV513, she led Rodolfo Richter, their phrasing seeming spontaneous, the high notes reverberating into the space. In the D minor concerto, RV514, she played second soloist to Kati Debretzeni in an even sparkier performance, the first movement full of playfully twisting musical figures.
Nothing else was quite so much fun. A Concerto Grosso and a Passacaglia by Handel sounded tame by comparison, despite the elegance of the playing and the easy, genial energy of Jonathan Cohen’s leadership at the harpsichord. And even Bach’s double concerto in D minor, a masterpiece if ever there was one, seemed subdued, with Benedetti, here playing second violin to Matthew Truscott, seeming further back in the sound mix than before.
Still, the Albert Hall without an audience is a melancholy place, so perhaps grand Italian gestures were what was needed to fill it. Another Vivaldi double concerto – for two oboes, in A minor – brought gorgeously sustained, honeyed playing from the oboists Katharina Spreckelsen and Sarah Humphrys. And the discovery of the evening for many will have been Charles Avison, Newcastle’s own baroque composer, whose Scarlatti-based Concerto Grosso No 5 was striking for its dramatic and textural contrasts.
