VIVA VIVALDI, with the All Saints Chamber Group conducted by Joel Rosenberg; Sunday, Dec. 6, 8 p.m. All Saints Episcopal Church (1710 S. Foothill Blvd.). Additional performance Tuesday, Dec. 8, 8 p.m. No admission charge.
Vivaldi is in. There's no getting around it. And he's on a big local roll right now. For example, he was on a recent Utah Symphony concert. Then there's the annual Vivaldi by Candlelight concerts. And now Viva Vivaldi, which actually are benefit concerts for the All Saints Episcopal Church grand piano fund.Also, Sunday's concert featured the debut of the All Saints Chamber Group, an ensemble of 15 string players under the direction of Joel Rosenberg.
This new orchestra is simply superb. The group came on strong and remained so throughout the evening. Rosenberg has a knack for finding some of the best local musicians and bringing them together in a solid musical organization. It would be great to hear this ensemble in a more varied program, since members have a lot of promise and a lot of talent.
An all-Vivaldi concert might appear to some people as being a bit stale. But Rosenberg understands how to bring out the rhythmic structure that is such an essential part of baroque music. Rosenberg's interpretations make this music fresh and exciting.
There were three soloists at Sunday's concert: flutist Tussy King, violinist Shi-Hwa Wang and guitarist Todd Woodbury, along with Rosenberg who, besides conducting, also played viola and violin. Each of these performers was featured in a separate concerto.
Rosenberg opened the concert by soloing in a viola concerto that he transcribed from the A minor Cello Concerto. Rosenberg and the orchestra gave this work a thoughtful, well-articulated and precise performance.
Wang was soloist in the "Autumn" Concerto from "The Four Seasons." Wang gave a good performance, although he had some problems with intonation and he tripped over his notes in a few places in the first movement.
Rosenberg joined Wang in the Concerto for Two Violins and Orchestra in A minor. This work isfrom the group of concertos known collectively as "L'Estro armonico." This is one of Vivaldi's more melodic concertos. Rosenberg and Wang worked well together here. They played the slow movement with passion and poignancy, while they infused the spirited third movement with a rhythmic drive that gave the music buoyancy and life.
The concert ended with a strong performance of the Concerto Grosso for Strings and Continuo in G minor. This is a fairly short work. Noteworthy for this concerto is the effective chromatic writing in the first movement. The slow movement is based on a recurring bass line, and the vigorous finale is another one of those super-charged movements that drive relentlessly to the final cadence.