With its hugely successful YouTube channel, Voices of Music (VOM) has built a strong online presence, offering concert highlights in high-definition video that preserve the atmosphere and intimacy of their public performances.
But, as the joyful concert at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in San Francisco on Dec. 19 made abundantly clear, nothing beats a live performance by the inspired group of early music specialists that VOM-founders/directors and husband-and-wife team Hanneke van Proosdij and David Tayler have assembled.
The group celebrated the holidays with a sparkling performance of virtuoso concertos from the Italian baroque, including two of Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, plus Christmas Concertos by Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713) and Giuseppe Torelli (1658-1709).
With a mere dozen musicians on stage — one per part — every player was maximally attuned to each other, and every aspect of the group’s music-making showed how close the musical relationships within VOM are. For the audience, it is very exciting to observe the concentration and the focused interplay, the constant eye contact and back-and-forth during the many changes of temperament and character in this beautiful and festive music. It is very exciting to observe the concentration and the focused interplay, the constant eye contact and back-and-forth during the many changes of temperament and character in this beautiful and festive music.
Corelli’s Christmas Concerto Opus 6, No. 8, performed right before intermission, was one of those pieces. It contains a myriad of sudden mood swings, and soloists Cynthia Miller Freivogel, Carla Moore (violins) and Elisabeth Reed (cello) excelled in the bravura passages, through the stateliness of the (second) Vivace to the peaceful closing movement, a Pastorale with a delicate, playful ending.
Freivogel and Moore also performed the respective solos in Vivaldi’s “Winter” and “Autumn” from his Four Seasons. It was interesting to hear these concertos outside of their usual context, played by violinists with highly individual approaches to timing and phrasing, and with very different timbres.
The heavy dose of Vivaldi in VOM’s holiday concert was rounded out by Tanya Tomkins playing the cello concerto in D-Minor RV 407, in which she skillfully capitalized on the rich contrast between the introverted central movement (“Largo e sempre piano”) and the exuberant final Allegro. Lisa Grodin was outstanding in the Violin Concerto in F-Major, RV 230, which explodes into a shower of sixteenth notes after a gorgeous introduction.
This review would not be complete without mentioning the other talented musicians of VOM, all veterans of the local early music scene: Maria Caswell, viola; Katherine Heater, organ; Maxine Nemerovski and Gabrielle Wunsch, violin; and Farley Pierce, violone. Together, with Van Proosdij on harpsichord and Tayler on archlute, they formed the hard-working backbone of the ensemble.