The Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra plays period instruments and tries to think like the composer and be true to the music. It produces a warm distinct sound that has a dance-like quality.
The stage in Shanghai is never short of performances by world-class orchestras and artists. However, concerts dedicated to Baroque music, especially played on period instruments, have hardly ever been seen here.
That was before the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra presented an extraordinary concert at the Shanghai Oriental Art Center on Saturday night.
Hailed by Gramophone magazine as one of the world's top Baroque orchestras, Toronto-based Tafelmusik presented a program that bridged the West and the East with a full range of period instruments. Some of them like the archlute and the Indian sarangi had never been played in performance in Shanghai.
The word "Tafelmusik" comes from the German for "table music," originally the 16th- and 17th-century music that was performed as background music for feasts and other events.
On Saturday night, 14 Tafelmusik musicians performed, along with a sarangi player, a pipa player and two indigenous Inuit singers.
In Vivaldi's famous 1723 violin concertos, the "Four Seasons," the special warmth produced by authentic sheep gut strings on all the string instruments amazed the whole audience.
A lighter bow, which tapers to a fine point at the tip, makes it flexible to play and, together with subtler bowing techniques, gives the music a dance-like character, explains Tafelmusik's music director Jeanne Lamon.
She demonstrated on her beloved violin, made in Venice in the early 18th century - it might even have been played under Vivaldi's own direction.
Long notes on solo instruments were often ornamented with subtlety and elegance, rather than played with vibratos, as they are usually played today. The vibrato technique, creating a tremulous, pulsing effect, was virtually non-existent in Vivaldi's time.
The archlute, which was positioned prominently, improvised beautiful chords and arpeggios together with the harpsichord provided by the Shanghai Oriental Art Center to harmonize the spaces between the bass line and the higher voices. These extra notes, which never appear on a printed score, are true joys to both performers and listeners of Baroque music.
When the Tafelmusik started its trek in period performing, it was one of the very few such ensembles in the world. However, since the 1990s younger period performing groups have flourished. Some of them have pushed the characteristics of period instruments to extremes to achieve striking effects. "That's a bit of an attention-getting tactic," Lamon says.
Indeed, through the years the Tafelmusik has retained its lead in the Baroque scene with its consistent elegance and refinement in playing.
Tafelmusik's success is closely related to its persistence in exploring new repertoires and new audiences. "I've always felt that if we keep just playing the music in the truest possible way, I'm not interested in it. If the music isn't good enough, first of all, to interest the musician, and to keep the interests of the audience, then I'm not interested in playing it and I don't think the audience should pay money to hear it," Lamon says.
This perspective is illustrated by the inclusion of contemporary Chinese and Indian instruments and Inuit singers in Saturday's program "Four Seasons Mosaic: The Cycle of the Sun," which was premiered in 2004.
"At the time of Vivaldi, there was also prosperity in music in the rest of the world, in North America, in Asia. But because of the lack of communication, people lived in their own world and didn't know what was going on elsewhere," says Alison Mackay, Tafelmusik's double bass player and the creator of the program. "So we want to establish a musical space in which musicians from different nations can play together and respect each other's culture and tradition."
An interesting example of this mutual respect was a duet by the lutist Lucas Harris and the Beijing-born pipa player Wen Zhao. Though popular in different hemispheres, the two instruments actually originate from the same Arab's oud.
This fact has inspired Wen to transcribe the famous Chinese pipa piece "Chun Jiang Hua Yue Ye" ("Moonlight of Spring River") for the two instruments. Unfortunately, it was only performed during the free rehearsal prior to the concert.
Indian sarangi player Aruna Narayan impressed the audience with the legendary 40-string instrument and the fact that her father, sarangi virtuoso Ram Narayan, used to be a frequent visitor to China. He played for late Premier Zhou Enlai several times.
Aruna Narayan was among the soloists in the final number, the concerto "Winter" arranged by film composer Mychael Danna to include all the musicians on the stage. An imaginative recomposition if not a faithful transcription, and a splendid end to the whole program.
"If we are doing our job well, then we are presenting the music in a way that is true to the music and brings the music to life in a most real way, I hope that Vivaldi would like to hear the concert tonight," Lamon said before the concert.
"I always think about the composer. If he were here what would he think? And if the answer is that he might be angry with me, then I'll think 'okay, I'm not gonna do that'." Vivaldi would have smiled.
(Shanghai Daily October 29, 2007)
