For the final night of the Tetbury festival, its artistic director Jonathan Cohen brought his own ensemble, the brilliant Arcangelo, to renew their successful association with Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang, established 10 years ago when they recorded Mozart’s violin concertos.
This programme focused on baroque music and, on an evening when the heavens opened and humidity levels risked causing havoc with gut strings, the necessarily fastidious and lengthy tuning readjustment underlined the precision required. Frang, too, was using gut strings, which made for some sublime sounds. As soloist in the Bach concerto in E, BWV 1042, she stood within the body of the ensemble, communing with the players around her, taking the outer movements at a brisk speed, the passagework mercurial and with striking dynamic effects. Yet it was the exquisitely expressive central Adagio that, in this fine church acoustic, carried a transcendent quality.
Almost more glorious for being less expected was Frang’s playing of the obbligato solos in the aria Mein Freund ist Mein from the wedding cantata Mein Freundin du bist Schön by a Bach from an older generation, Johann Christoph, a cousin of Johann Sebastian. In this piece, apparently regularly performed at Bach family weddings – of which there were many – Frang’s exchanges with the celestially pure soprano of Julia Doyle conveyed the remarkable sensuality of the lines.
Doyle had also sung the songs in the music from Purcell’s The Fairy Queen that had opened the concert. Originally presented for a wedding anniversary of monarchs William and Mary, not all is celebratory, and the acute poignancy of Doyle’s singing of The Plaint – akin to the intensity of Dido’s Lament – was heartbreaking.
Directing from the harpsichord, Cohen ensures Arcangelo’s playing has both richness and delicacy, with a vibrantly rhythmic flow, bringing to Handel’s Concerto Grosso Op 6 No 6 and Telemann’s witty Ouverture des Nations Anciens et Modernes a wonderful immediacy. Finally, it was the highly sympathetic pairing of Frang and Doyle, repeated in the Handel aria Tu Del Ciel Ministro Eletto from Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, all elegance and soaring beauty, that set the seal on a quietly triumphant occasion.
• Arcangelo with Vilde Frang and Julia Doyle perform at Wigmore Hall, London, on 8 October
