A glowing concert review from our June 22, 2008 Bach Sons prgram in Leipzig. Nice.
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Light and shadow, consonances and dissonances, softness and sharpness, old music in youthful dressing, not a hint of boredom and no dusty music on dusty shelves. The ensemble Harmonie Universelle (Florian Deuter, - leader and violin, Mónica Waisman – violin, David Glidden – viola, Leonhard Bartussek – cello and Philippe Grisvard – cembalo) presents baroque music as if it is a kind of new phenomenon, the ink still fresh. You hear it in a glimpse, no question about it. Authentic styling? Yes, no doubt. The Old Town Hall was literally filled with music on June 22, a warm Sunday afternoon.
Harmonie Universelle in the Old Town Hall ©Bach-Archiv Leipzig/Gert Mothes
Here everything was about music floating freely, with innate tempi and textural contrasts, nothing forced or overemphasised, the ornamentation uncommonly clean: the kind of deliciously seducing music making that can create the extraordinary, as in Johann Bernard Bach’s Overture No. 3 in E minor for 2 violins, viola and basso continuo. Or consistently engaging in Johann Gottlieb Goldberg’s Sonata in C major for 2 violins and basso continuo. The audience was overwhelmed by the rapture in C.P.E. Bach’s Trio Sonata in C minor Wq 161/1 (2 violins and basso continuo), and rightly so. The concluding piece, an Overture in G minor (2 violins, viola and basso continuo) by an anonymous composer (it had been erroneously attributed to J.S. Bach and given the BWV No. 170) could not have been presented in more lustrous sound and with a greater variety of timbre. The ensemble’s coruscating commitment was most enthralling.
