Rachel Podger and Brecon Baroque

It became very clear, very quickly, why Vivaldi is so well known for one piece of music during Rachel Polger’s performance at St Peter Mancroft. This concert was very much a game of two halves, with a selection of the composer’s lesser-known pieces, followed by the Four Seasons. Rogers laudable objective was clearly to put the Seasons into perspective, giving the audience a context into which they should be placed. The difficulty, as she tacitly acknowledged with something close to an apology, was that the Four Seasons, a leviathan that has advertised everything from smartphones to BMWs, was what everyone had come to hear.
 
First, though, was a selection of sacred works, best thought of as an appetiser for the feast to come. Polger and her Brecon Baroque played a trio of pieces – two sonatas and a concerto – back-to-back before making any introductions, which made an unassuming start to proceedings. The works left little impression, to be frank, the most engaging element of the performance being an introduction to the period instruments at work. The timeless sound of Polger’s violin was always dominant, but both the harpsichord and organ played their part. Most intriguing was the partnership of violone and theorbo, droning just above the human ear’s perception, creating a pleasingly unfamiliar hum, akin to the rumble of distant thunder. Unfortunately, the unforgiving acoustics of St Peter Mancroft meant that the delicate sound of the harpsichord was poorly served, as was that of the lute, when Alex McCartney took centre stage for Vivaldi’s Concerto for Lute in D Major. The audience seemed to crane forward as one as the tiny sounds from the lute dispersed up and away into the church’s vaulted ceiling. Faultlessly delivered, it was nonetheless too small a sound in too big a venue, so that it was only when Bach stepped up to the plate, with his transcription of Vivaldi’s Concerto in D major that the evening really started to fly. Suddenly, one got the sense of the energy and commitment this ensemble was capable of, and why they have been causing such a stir.
 
After the interval, we got a re-cap from Polger who, straining to be heard without amplification, teasingly reiterated that our patience was shortly to be rewarded. I got the sense that she was not entirely happy with how the earlier part of the programme had been received and perhaps had sensed that the audience had been twiddling their fingers. Trapped in the infernally uncomfortable pews of the church, it was hard to pay due regard to unfamiliar work, and there is no denying that both audience and performers sat and stood just that little bit straighter when Winter started up. In an inspired move, violone player Jan Spencer was co-opted to read out the poems that originally accompanied the music. By doing so, he highlighted just how exactly Vivaldi’s composition was intended to mirror the seasons. Here were the concertos presented as a whole – an indivisible cycle of the seasons, with all the twists and turns capricious nature throws at us. Whether it’s the barking dog of Jane Rogers’s viola or the chit chat of the peasant violins, this was all about specificity and detail. What had previously been an indicative, but largely abstract, aural representation became something altogether more concrete. I heard nymphs and shepherds were gaily dancing in Spring, while the horses of the Autumn hunt galloped with an energy and power I hadn’t noticed before. Those pizzicato strings in Summer are a sudden rainstorm – of course they are – while those tentative strings in Winter are obviously feet slipping on ice.
 
This was a stripped down version of the work. While Sabina Stoffer’s violin was bolstered by Henry Tong joining the ensemble for the second half, it was generally a case of each of the musicians taking on one part. Far from feeling sparse, however, the sound delivered was transformed into an uncluttered take on what would otherwise might have been a wearily familiar run through of a done-to-death classic. Controlling her ensemble with a nod of the head and a swish of her bow, Polger introduced a precise phrasing and articulation that invited listeners to re-evaluate what they thought they already knew. Significantly, this also cleared a path for her astonishing virtuoso, and startlingly fresh, interpretation of the keynote solos – her showmanship ably demonstrating how much the Four Seasons is a vehicle for fine musicianship and a timely reminder that Vivaldi was known in his day as much for his playing as he was for his composition.