3-or rather placed off to either side in pairs to enhance the piece’s antiphonal effects. The horns were also front and center in Handel’s Concerto a due cori No. Concertmaster Nurit Bar-Josef, so strong in romantic repertoire last week, sounded less at ease in her solos here, struggling at times with rhythm and intonation. The second trio, set therefore at a daunting pace, was a tour de force for the horns and the oboe section. Less refinement from them would have been welcome in the first movement.īach appended a mini-dance suite to the standard three movements of this concerto, and Koopman kept the various movements in proportion to each other in terms of tempo. The horns, which sound off on clashing hunting calls in the first movement, are supposed to be like rude interlopers into the world of courtly gentility in this piece. 1, principal horn player Abel Pereira negotiated the high horn parts with note-perfect precision. Koopman is an all-body sort of conductor, but his head and shoulders did not necessarily mark the same placement of the beat, judging from the sometimes rough starts to movements on the first half. The balance was much better against the three trumpets, brilliant in sound, especially principal trumpeter William Gerlach on the soaring top part. Tellingly, Koopman further reduced the number of cellos and double-basses in the famous “Air” movement, shorn of almost all rubato and quite delicate and pretty as a result. The resulting string section was still larger than what Bach had at his disposal, for example, and they almost completely drowned out the color of the two oboes and single bassoon in the Orchestral Suite No. The instrument were modern, but the lack of vibrato and more detached style of articulation offered a nod to the past.
For this performance Koopman scaled down the NSO, fielding just over thirty string players. Without using historical instruments and having a deeper knowledge of period ornamentation, a compromise is often the best solution for non-specialist groups. Part of the problem large orchestras face with Baroque music is that historically minded ensembles have transformed listeners’ expectations. It took a visit by Dutch guest conductor Ton Koopman to turn the NSO back to these mostly familiar pieces by Bach and Handel. The National Symphony Orchestra last performed three of the four works on their concert Thursday night in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall toward the end of the previous century. Since the rise of the historically informed performance movement, mainstream orchestras have tended to perform less and less Baroque music. Ton Koopman conducted the National Symphony Orchestra in music of Bach and Handel Thursday night.
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