Opera/masque from 1681

In Auer Hall the previous evening, the IU Baroque Orchestra and vocal soloists, astutely guided by Nigel North, performed “Venus and Adonis,” a work labeled by its composer, John Blow, “A Masque for the Entertainment of the King.”

The 50-minute piece, first given at the court of Charles II in Oxford, retells the legend of the immortal Venus and the mortal Adonis, their love affair, his departure for a hunt and fatal wounding by a wild boar, his death in her arms.

Soprano Kathryn Summersett and baritone Kevin de Benedictis handled the embraces and Blow’s expressive music with persuasive determination. Soprano Claire Daniels fit her portrayal of Cupid genially into the mix. A four-member chorus and the Baroque Orchestra complemented and completed the soloists. With the knowing North as their trainer and conductor, Blow’s score was capably served. One might, however, have wished for additional stage direction to make the action more compelling.

On listening to this less familiar opera/masque, a product of 1681, one recalled what came just eight years later, Purcell’s tragedy of two other mythical lovers, “Dido and Aeneas.” Ah, what a difference: Purcell’s work of genius has transcended time; Blow’s has become a curiosity, worth more as a historic reference to a monarch’s court life and musical taste than as a work of stature. Still, this reviewer was appreciative of exposure to a rarity.

Copyright: HeraldTimesOnline.com 2013

The Jacobs School of Music will present a performance of English Baroque composer John Blow’s three-act masque, Venus and Adonis, Saturday April 20 at 8pm in Auer Hall. The concert will be performed by instrumentalists and singers from the school’s Early Music Institute and directed by Nigel North.

Described as “A Masque for the Entertainment of the King”, Venus and Adonis was first performed before King Charles II and his court, in Oxford in 1681. The subject was well known; a mythological episode from Ovid’s Metamorphoses in which the Goddess Venus falls in love with the mortal and virile Adonis. He leaves her in order to join a hunt and be able to enjoy worldly pursuits. She then loses him when he is fatally wounded by a wild boar during the hunt.

John Blow’s version, which must have appealed to the rather pleasure loving and immoral court of Charles II, was conceived as court entertainment and also something of a family affair. One of the King’s mistresses, the actress Moll Davies, played the part of Venus and one can imagine how Charles would have identified with the role of Adonis!  Their nine year-old illegitimate daughter, Lady Mary Tudor, played the role of Cupid. In real life Moll Davies was eventually discarded and was never Charles’ favorite. Nell Gwyn (another actress) held the role as the King’ preferred lover.

Saturday’s performance will be presented as a concert performance of the work.

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CLASSICAL ORCHESTRA

Reviews: Musicians perform effective concerts

Classical Orchestra

Michael McCraw, from the Early Music Institute, conducted Sunday afternoon’s IU Classical Orchestra concert in Auer, one devoted to music of the Classical Age’s supreme composers, Haydn and Mozart.

He chose works written when Haydn was a young man and Mozart was a teen. Haydn’s “Alleluia” Symphony, the Number 30 in C Major, is a genial, sunny piece that McCraw and the orchestra treated that very way and, stylistically, as one presumes folks heard it back in the 1760s: transparently and buoyantly.

Mozart’s Bassoon Concerto, K.191, composed when he was 18, is the only one extant for that instrument. Jacobs student Kelsey Andrew Schilling chose it for his appearance with the orchestra and, throughout its reading, controlled that elongated, seemingly awkward instrument masterfully. He allowed no burps or wows or dubious notes to sneak out and mar a tidy performance that rightfully and prominently highlighted the felicities and jollies in the score.

Soprano Lindsey McLennan joined the orchestra for Mozart’s effusive “Exultate, jubilate,” the well-known work of a 16-year-old, one that ends with the famous “Alleluja.” McLennan negotiated all its intricacies, while also exuding the spirit of a message that urges the listener to “Rejoice, be glad, O you blessed souls.”

Conductor McCraw saw to it that his Classical Orchestra forces, whether working alone or in collaboration with a soloist, produced sweetly distilled sounds of their own.

Copyright: HeraldTimesOnline.com 2013

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MUSIC REVIEWS: IU CONCERT ORCHESTRA AND INDIANAPOLIS BAROQUE ORCHESTRA

MUSIC REVIEWS: Saturday concerts bring cheers and applause from the concert-goers

Auer Hall hosted a concert by the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, an outfit generously peopled with musicians familiar to local audiences, this either because they studied in IU’s Early Music Institute (EMI) and/or because they participated in Bloomington Early Music Festival performances.

The ensemble is artistically directed and conducted these days by Barthold Kuijken, a world-renowned Baroque flutist. Kuijken kept his flute at home on Saturday to concentrate on leading his merry band of Early Music instrumentalists in works from the 17th and 18th centuries.

The program also meant to showcase three current EMI violinists, winners of the orchestra’s Concerto Competition. The trio — Toma Iliev, Maria Romero and Stephanie Raby — performed Antonio Vivaldi’s Concerto in F Major, RV 551. They played it persuasively and with gusto. Very occasional intonation issues, as one also heard elsewhere during the program, didn’t, for this listener, at least, detract significantly from the thrust and tenor of a musically satisfying occasion.

Kuijken and the orchestra opened and ended with French fare. An expressive Overture and Passacaille from Jean-Baptiste Lully’s opera “Armide” set things into motion, and a tune-filled Suite of 19 excerpts from Jean-Philippe Rameau’s “Dardanus,” featuring a variety of material suggestive of differing dramatic situations, brought matters to an impressive finish. In between, there was German music, an Overture in E Minor by Georg Philipp Telemann, amounting to a lively and attractive composition with attached movements that distinctively showed off the orchestra’s and Kuijken’s keen sense for the Baroque.

Copyright: HeraldTimesOnline.com 2013

Doctoral candidate Anna Marsh, baroque bassoon, played principal bassoon on the Grammy-nominated album Israel in Egypt by the Trinity Wall Street Choir and Orchestra.

The preliminary round of the concerto competition sponsored by the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra and the Early Music Institute took place Dec. 7.

Toma Iliev, Maria Romero Ramos, Stephanie Raby (Concerto for three violins, strings, and basso continuo in F Major, Vivaldi); Eunji Lee (Harpsichord concerto in D Minor, C. P. E. Bach); and Stephanie Raby (Concerto for violin, strings, and basso continuo in D Major, Vivaldi) have been chosen to perform in the final round of the competition on Jan. 14.

Finalists from that round will perform with the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra on Saturday, Jan. 19, at 4pm in Auer Hall.

In addition to the concerto, the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra will perform the music of Rameau, Lully, and Telemann under the direction of Barthold Kuijken.

The Early Music Institute’s Lindsey McLennan will sing the soprano solos in Bach’s A Major Mass (BWV 234) with the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra (IBO), under the direction of the orchestra’s principal conductor, Barthold Kuijken.

The three concerts are part of the IBO’s Bachtoberfest and take place in various venues on October 27, 28, and 29 in Columbus and Indianapolis. Full details are on the IBO website.