Devon Baroque brings Birds, Beasts & Battles to Dartington Great Hall
(review)

It would be so very easy for Devon Baroque to stick to a staple diet of Vivaldi, Bach, Corelli or Handel But under the expert tutelage of leader, Margaret Faultless, you can always expect something different every time.

Birds, Beasts & Battles seemed an odd title for an afternoon performance in the magnificent ambience of the Great Hall, Dartington. Indeed, each piece benefitted from a short introduction, which Margaret herself admitted might come over more like a mini-lecture.

In the event, however, her unrivalled erudition and succinct, light-hearted introductions set the scene perfectly for what was to follow, and for repertoire which, for the majority of those present, would, in fact, probably be unfamiliar territory.

While the music might have lacked somewhat in true substance, it gave the players a real chance to enjoy themselves, luxuriate in a few rare histrionics, make use of some interesting antiphonal and spatial effects, genuinely produce some really discordant passages and effects, all of which clearly enlightened, but more importantly, entertained the large audience.

Bach’s sparkling Third Brandenburg Concerto provided the perfect end to this undeniably interesting programme. Gone were the animal noises, battle sounds and other various representational effects.

Here was merely pure music which drew a simply outstanding performance from every member of Devon Baroque, an ensemble which just seems to get better, each time you hear it.

PHILIP R BUTTALL
 

and here is another review:

The Great Hall at Dartington provided the perfect setting for this superb concert of 17th- and 18th-century descriptive string music. Whether in virtuoso solos or in Bach’s intricately contrapuntal 3rd Brandenburg Concerto, which provided a splendidly exhilarating finale, its fine acoustics gave Devon Baroque’s sound a winning combination of brilliance and richness, which ensured that every expressive detail of these vivid musical pictures was crystal clear. Margaret Faultless’s magnificent playing of Carlo Farina’s Capriccio Stravagante, an extended violin solo which uses breathtaking virtuoso effects to paint a delightfully graphic sound-picture of life in early 17th-century Italy – complete with barking dogs, mewing cats and the strumming of a Spanish guitar – was a real tour-de-force. Heinrich Biber’s Sonata Representativa added both a sublime nightingale and ridiculously comical croaking frogs to the musical menagerie, while his Battalia included the soldiers’ equally comical, and cacophonous, simultaneous singing of a medley of popular tunes in the pub the night before the battle. The audience’s manifest enthusiasm for these pieces, and indeed for this whole thoroughly entertaining programme, in which the Brandenburg concerto was the only item by a well-known composer, provided satisfying proof of the immense rewards to be gained by delving into the work of musicians who are not (yet) household names. It was also a fine and fully-deserved tribute to performances which combined the rhythmic energy and precision, crisp articulation, and expressive eloquence which enable today’s period ensembles to bring long-neglected music so gloriously back to life.

Elizabeth Roche

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