Concert review: Red Dot Baroque brings music to life with period instruments

Straits Times, 7 Nov 2023

Hoping to hear baroque music beyond the obligatory Brandenburg Concertos, Water Music, Messiah and Four Seasons?

Singapore’s dedicated early music/period instrument ensemble Red Dot Baroque (RDB) and its founder-leader Alan Choo are the go-to people. And its latest collaboration – with six members of The New Baroque Company (TNBC) from South Korea – presented a rare programme of music probably played here for the very first time.

For example, has anybody actually heard Georg Philipp Telemann’s Water Music in performance? This Overture-Suite in 10 movements carries the title “Hamburger Ebb Und Fluth”, a celebration of the Elbe River in the German port city of Hamburg. Each of the baroque dance movements, alternating between fast and slow, have fanciful titles referring to the sea gods.

Percussive effects from a thunder sheet (a metal plate), ocean drum (filled with sliding sand) and tambourine were striking enough. And these were topped by slurring strings in the lurching final dance, depicting punch-drunk sailors, all adding to the work’s brine-laden and sea-worthy colour.

This concert was also a showcase of unusual concertos. TNBC’s Cho Hyunkun and RDB’s Yeh Tzu-Jou were two very well-matched soloists in Vivaldi’s Concerto In G minor (RV 531) for two cellos. Their parts echoed and mirrored each other closely all through the work, culminating in an intimate slow movement which could have easily been called a romance.

The piece de resistance was co-leader Choi Hyungjung performing Vivaldi’s Concerto In D minor (RV 393) for viola d’amore, likely the first time this instrument of antiquity has been heard here. It has 14 strings, seven played strings and seven sympathetic strings that vibrate when the former are bowed. It has a rich and pleasing sound, penetrating in intensity yet tender in feel.

Keeping in tune through all three movements was, however, the greatest challenge, but Choi did so with confident aplomb and style. The feisty and stormy finale also had a cadenza of exacting difficulty that made one surmise that only the most daring of musicians would even attempt to learn this instrument.

Another concerto that united RDB and TNBC players was Telemann’s Concerto In E minor (TWV 52:e1) for flute and recorder, with Cheryl Lim and Jeon HyeonHo respectively as an almost indivisible unit. The lovely Largo was accompanied by pizzicato strings while the martial foot-stomping finale was redolent of rustic folk music from lands east of Germany.

Adding to the variety of the evening were arias sung by superb countertenor Jang Jungkwon, including passionate outpourings of German composer Johann Adolf Hasse’s Mea Tormenta, Properate! (My Torments, Hurry!) and frightening intensity exhibited in Vivaldi’s Gelido In Ogni Vena (I Feel Ice Coursing In Every Vein) from the opera Farnace.

The concert closed with French composer Jean-Fery Rebel’s Les Caracteres De La Danse (The Characters Of The Dance), a kaleidoscopic compendium of every baroque dance conceivable, handily wrapped up within a single movement.

The vociferous applause prompted a favourite encore, with Jang returning to sing Handel’s heartfelt Lascia Ch’io Pianga (Let Me Weep) from Rinaldo. Baroque music has rarely sounded this alive.