OAE puts the rock in baroque at Library of Congress

Soprano Julia Bullock performed with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment Friday night at the Library of Congress. Photo: Christian Steiner
The last time the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment appeared at the Library of Congress, in 2006, they brought mostly woodwind and brass players. The celebrated early music ensemble’s string section, accompanied by three woodwind players and a percussionist, came to town this time. The group’s first U.S. tour since the pandemic, featuring some of the baroque period’s greatest hits along with a few surprises, concluded in the Coolidge Auditorium on Friday night.
The orchestral introduction to Act III of Handel’s Solomon, a piece dubbed “The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba” by conductor Thomas Beecham, opened the evening with a bustle of activity. OAE’s democratic nature, playing without a conductor and under a rotating leadership, was reflected in the extraordinary level of commitment of each musician, heard throughout the program, with some occasional lapses of rhythmic unity.
First violinist Kati Debretzeni, leading the orchestra on this tour, took the solo part in “La Primavera,” the celebrated “Spring” concerto from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. The interpretation felt quite individualized, with Debretzeni adding some pleasing ornamentation and taking considerable rhythmic liberties. In the birdsong episode of the first movement, Debretzeni and her two violinist colleagues ended up off from one another metrically, an error that began around the time an actual birdsong was added to the mix, completely unnecessarily.
A vanilla performance of the Air from Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3 did not quite justify including this over-famous piece, even with a central section reduced to one player per part to add some variety. Better results came in three instrumental selections for Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, with the orchestra’s fine oboist pair, Daniel Bates (who resides here in Washington) and Alexandra Bellamy, providing rustic appeal in the jaunty Jig. The Hornpipe from Act III had a pleasing rhythmic crunchiness as well, with drum and tambourine added by Adrian Bending.
Johann Pachelbel’s ubiquitous Canon in D Major proved a delight when played by baroque specialists, with five string players augmented by harpsichord and theorbo. The tempo fluctuations gave particular zip to the fastest variations over the endlessly repeating bass line in cello and double-bass. As if to compensate themselves for having to play the most boring bass part in music history, the three cellists and double-bass player introduced the Pachelbel with the evening’s greatest discovery, a poignant Largo from Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Cellos in G Minor, a dark-hued moment of deep-sonority lushness.
Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 showcased the individuality of the orchestra’s ten lead string players. Composed like a wreath, with the strands of three violins, three violas, and three cellos interwoven on contrapuntal motifs, it featured more of the silky playing of violist Francesca Gilbert. Debretzeni added, in an improvisatory manner, a long solo cadenza to introduce the slow movement, which Bach wrote out only as a simple cadence.
The remaining instrumental selections seemed superfluous, beginning with four tightly played but unremarkable selections from Telemann’s Hamburger Ebb und Fluth, sometimes known as Water Music. Percussionist Adrian Bending gave long spoken digressions, in unfortunate superabundance from various players all evening, to frame two brief French selections, Lully’s “Marche pour la cérémonie des turcs” from Le bourgeois gentilhomme and the effervescent “Les Sauvages” from Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes.
The guest soloist for this OAE tour, soprano Julia Bullock, seemed mismatched to the program for the most part. She has excelled in past appearances, mostly in more recent repertoire, for her expressive melodic line. Barbara Strozzi’s “Che si può fare,” a dramatic lament over a chaconne bass pattern, proved the only work on the program that offered that sort of intensity for Bullock’s plangent voice, often straightened out in tone for emotional effect. Bending’s choice of added percussion gave the piece a surprising, slightly Latin tinge.
Bullock added florid ornamentation to the repeats of the main theme of “Verdi prati,” from Handel’s Alcina, but it pressed her small lower range into paleness much of the time. Bullock’s voice did not have the agility or the power at the top either for “Da tempeste il legno infranto,” from the same composer’s Giulio Cesare. Including “If Love’s a Sweet Passion” from Purcell’s The Fairy Queen was just odd, since it had to be shorn of its solo bass part and chorus.
OAE’s trumpeter reportedly did not make it to the end of the tour, meaning that an initially planned Purcell trumpet sonata was cut from the program. That left the problem of what to do with the trumpet part in the aria “Let the Bright Seraphim,” from Handel’s Samson. Oboist Daniel Bates filled in capably, leading Bullock, with a wink, to change a line of the text from “uplifted angel trumpets blow” to “angel oboes.”
An unexpected encore, Jealousy’s aria from the opera Céphale et Procris by Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, proved another high point in this mixed concert, not least for the thundering drum sounds accompanying the dance of the demons.
Nicolas Altstaedt performs solo cello works by Bach, Dutilleux, and Kodály 8 p.m. January 28. loc.gov