Eight years after their highly regarded recording, Isabelle Faust, Giovanni Antonini and the Italian period instrument ensemble Il Giardino Armonico gathered again for Mozart's complete Violin Concertos over two evenings at the Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall. The tour was to have taken place in 2021 but had to be cancelled because of the pandemic. It’s heartening to see the venue honour their invitation – certainly better late than never. The programme for the second evening consisted of the Violin Concertos Nos. 2 and 5, the Rondo in C major K.373, all from his Salzburg years, as well as Gluck’s ballet music for Don Juan, a work which Antonini has championed since recording it a decade ago.
Isabelle Faust, a leading violinist who has successfully embraced historically informed performance, was perfectly at ease performing with the vibrant and lively playing of Il Giardino Armonico. On this occasion, she played on her “Sleeping Beauty” Stradivarius strung with gut strings and a classical bow, rather than a historically set-up instrument, but her deep understanding of the performing practice, and perhaps more importantly the “spirit” with which Antonini and his group perform, was evident. Occasionally Faust’s playing revealed her modern roots, and the gut strings were a bit scratchy (perhaps because of the dryness of the air), but these are small details and what mattered was their joyful rapport.
The concert opened with the second concerto in D major, perhaps the least played of the five, but a gem where the soloist is constantly in dialogue with the ensemble. Faust joined in the tutti introductions, she and the players inspiring and reacting to each other, throwing phrases and ideas to and fro, which elevated this elegant but fairly simple music to a higher realm. Antonini kept the music moving in a leisurely but spirited manner. Interestingly though, when Faust played the cadenzas, which were composed for her by the fortepianist Andreas Staier, she would turn into her usual “soloist” mode, as if she were playing solo Bach. This may have been because Staier’s cadenzas were written in a “learned” style rather than for virtuosic display.
Meanwhile, the A major concerto, which concluded the concert, is a more characterful work, in particular the popular and foot-tapping alla turca style finale cannot fail to please the audience, especially with such energetic and vivid playing as here. But my personal highlight was Faust’s pure-toned and poised playing in the Adagio, especially in the minor key middle section, which seemed to anticipate the mature Mozart. Together with the charming Rondo for violin and orchestra in C major, composed shortly before Mozart left Salzburg, one can only speculate what he might have composed had he continued to write for violin and orchestra in Vienna.
In between, Antonini and his band performed Gluck’s ballet music for Don Juan, performed in Vienna in 1761, which condenses the story into 20 minutes and closes with a dramatic damnation scene (which Gluck later recycled as the Dance of the Furies in the French version of Orfeo). Antonini is a great inspirer of the musicians. Although on stage he looks like he’s just waving his arms around (and grunting), when he wants a certain expression, colour or dynamic, he nails it with a single gesture. The ensemble’s exuberant and animated playing, especially the rustic oboes and horns, was fully evident in their encore, the final movement of Haydn’s Trauer Symphony, in which Faust joined in the first violins with great intensity.
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