Chamber Orchestra so Subtle its Members Play as One

by Lloyd Dykk / Vancouver Sun (May 26, 1997)

The Italian chamber orchestra I Solisti Veneti closed the Chan Centre's inaugural two-week spring festival on Saturday. In the varied programming of that time the Chan Shun Concert Hall has been put through just about every acoustical test and maybe the most taxing of them was the transparent playing of I Solisti Veneti, the illustrious 16-member string orchestra under director Claudio Scimone, who founded the group in Padua in 1959.

The subtlest of virtuosos, they play as one, and are capable of such spectacular dynamic control that Scimone often directed them to fade down to whispers so soft they'd read as quintuple-piano on a score, not that there's ever a marking that asks for such levels of quiet.

At times, it was manneristic. Just because the players could do it didn't always make it right for the music. At the same time, the hall reflected it all. The quietness was a testament to the players' precision of ensemble - even the bassist shaving his massive instrument down to match - and a tribute to the acoustics which transmitted these tiny cuticles of sound with rich, full-toned presence even at their softest.

The program was all-Italian, with Baroque and Classical favorites and even rarities.

The Baroque included Vivaldi, Tartini and Albinoni, and Boccherini, a contemporary of Haydn, stood in for Classical, though his piece on the program was exotic. We never hear this rustic suite which translates as Night Music of the Streets of Madrid, part of the legacy of an Italian composer who spent most of his life in Madrid writing music commissioned by Spanish royalty. Fortunately, Boccherini didn't know the future would pigeon-hole him as a "classical" composer or he might have thought better of listening so freshly to the strange folk music around him.

This was delightful, and so was the music that has won Antonio Vivaldi so many friends around the world: The picturesque quartet of concertos known as The Four Seasons. By now this music has become such as institution that it's become all but unbearable, especially with the massive forces that traditionally play it. The sonic intimacy of scope from 16 strings plus harpsichord re-endeared and freshened it to the ear, and so did the standard virtuosity expected of its solo violinist - here, Marco Fornaciari. But I didn't like the extremes of dynamic contrast - those eerily hushed ritornellos - that sometimes hampered the music's narrative flow with no apparent reason but to show off quietly.

The players' virtuosity was much more effective when they weren't calling attention to it, as in Tomaso Albinoni's Concerto in D, Op. 9, No. 2 for oboe and strings.

Giuseppe Falso was the oboist who wove such long, singing, securely-decorated lines over the arpeggiated ground-bass of the strings. And just as effectively, Mauro Maur stepped in with his tine, difficult Baroque trumpet for Tartini's Concerto in D and tossed off garlands and a final movement cadenza that was beyond belief.

There were three encores for the flashy but subtle Italians: a concerto movement by Corelli, a lovably-bumptious string-sonata movement by Rossini, and inevitable, the tune we all know - the Boccherini "Minuet".

There was a standing ovation. The charmingly eccentric conductor Scimone, who'd conducted with such tiny, economical beats, acknowledged the applause by framing a "heart" with his fingers and held it against his chest.