Work: Les Élémens

The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra ventures into (mostly) Baroque territory with the help of mezzo-soprano Caitlin Hulcup. 

Is there any instrument more bittersweet than the viola? The violin does the acrobatics, the cello is more conventionally beautiful, but the viola sits in the middle of the orchestral palette like no other instrument. Neither high nor low, it’s perfectly placed to embody the contradictory and the conflicted, ideal for a sense of desire denied or of fulfilment deferred.

The Concertgebouw has been celebrating its 125th anniversary throughout 2013. On the darkest, rainiest Sunday evening in months, the Combattimento Consort Amsterdam defied the oncoming winter with a joyous, exuberant performance, one of a series of special celebratory concerts for this jubilee year.