Corelli and His Contemporaries
Well it was Friday the thirteen. What had been billed as "Corelli and his Contemporaries" turned out to have no music by Corelli at all. The reason being that for Corelli you need two violins. Tonight there was only one violinist due to a family emergency. This did not alter my enjoyment as I am not an expert in Baroque music.
The evening was a concert in aid of the "Medical Foundation" who care for victims of torture. It was held at Wolterton Hall, built in the 1700's and designed by Thomas Ripley for the Walpole family as in Sir Robert Walpole the first Prime Minister. The hall is still owned by the Walpole family so there were plenty of family portaits looking down on us as we listened to the music. It was a perfect summer's evening and we started off with a glass of wine on the balcony looking out over the gardens to a lake. A view that is hard to be beaten. The concert was performed by the Armonico Tributo a group of young musicians who met in Birmingham and who perform early music on authentic instruments. This evening was a quartet of voice, violin, cello and harpsichord. They did explain that the instruments were different from modern instruments especially the violin and cello which use cat gut not metal for the strings and so slip out of tune more readily, especially as the temperature changed with the evening air. For the animal lovers they did explain that it was not actual cat gut!
The room was ideally suited for such an evening. The wall hangings and the paintings made you feel that the concert could have happened at any time in the last 300 years. We were treated to music by Handel, J S Bach and Purcell. As the performance changed close to performance time there wasn't a programme to say what each piece was.
After the performance there were refreshments in the adjoining room where there was the opportunity to talk to other members of the audience and the musicians. Talking to the performers, they said that they had quite enjoyed the experience of making up the programme of music using the pieces that they especially like. I had not heard the music before but I liked it so I will be checking out baroque music again.
By now the sun had set and we were guided back to the cars by moonlight. There wasn't a street light in sight and being nearly midsummer, despite being nearly 11 o'clock, the sky was still light in places but the first stars were visible a very romantic end to a great evening.
