VoxCarnyx

City Halls, Glasgow

One of the greatest realisations in historic music performance over the past century has been to recognise and emulate the intrinsic spirit of the dance that lies at the heart of most European Baroque music, not  least that of JS Bach. If the clues were obvious in most cases – suite movements labelled Menuetto, Gavotte, Bourrée, Gigue, etc – it took time for even the pioneering 20th century revivalists to apply that lithely to their often earthbound interpretations. Thank goodness we’ve moved on – or rather, perhaps, moved back.

Nothing expressed this better than Baroque violinist Rachel Podger’s mainly-Bach programme with the SCO on Friday, one of its newly-established matinee concerts which played to a near-capacity Glasgow audience. Podger is like a breath of fresh air, cheerily and eruditely introducing the programme, before addressing the band with such balletic playing and directing as to extract the same supple refinement from the entire ensemble, which stood throughout .

Predominant within this nimble 18th-century cocktail were some of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, one (albeit the opening movement only of No 3) sneakily disguised in its self-borrowed form as the opening Sinfonia to the Cantata 174, “Ich liebe den Höchsten von ganzem Gemüte”. 

Podger opened with No 1, a dazzling showpiece for the natural horns whose counter rhythms at the start were a foretaste of the hooligan element they were to exhibit in the closing Menuetto. Hornists Boštjan Lipovšek and Jamie Shield were well up to their riotous task, rowdy but complicit in a performance – complete with Podger on delicate piccolo violin – that bristled with tantalising contrast and character.

The first half ended with that Cantata version of the Third Concerto, in which Bach amplifies his original with the colourful addition of winds and horns (how do they achieve those electrifying trills with mere lip action?). But not before sidestepping into Telemann’s Sonata in E minor (a dance suite in all but name) and a reminder that Bach wasn’t the only virtuoso circus act in town. Another svelte performance, and Baroque writing notable for its own idiosyncratic quirks (almost Purcellian in bits), proved once again that exquisite poeticism and spirited flamboyance are exhilarating bedfellows.

The second half coupled Brandenburg 4 with Bach’s Orchestral Suite No 3 in D. The former proved a thrilling, physically expressive showcase for SCO flautists André Cebrián and Marta Gómez, as well as for Podger herself, conquering the rollercoaster violin solo with easeful, gobsmacking facility. Equally, she elicited touches – judiciously unexpected hiatuses from the entire ensemble – that seemed magically spontaneous.

The Suite brought with it a sense of destination, the arrival on stage of the skyrocketing trumpet threesome and pertinent timpani lending a burnished sheen to this stirring concert finale. Most remarkable, however, was the appealing focus of the sound, Podger insisting on a precise, ringing clarity from the brass that kept everything superbly in proportion. Her tempi were pressing but perfectly accommodating. The Air – universally familiar as the old Hamlet cigar advert – served up a refreshing song-like interlude, coloured by neat improvised fill-ins on the lute. The closing dance movements summed up the choreographed perfection of the entire afternoon. 

Ken Walton