Sonata in B minor BWV1014 - Bach
Chaconne in D minor - Bach
Chaconne in G - Handel
La Folia - Corelli
Sonata in G K301 - Mozart
Sonata in C minor Op 30 No 2 - Beethoven
Trading places was the theme of the NCH/Irish Times Celebrity Concert at the NCH on Thursday last. Maxim Vengerov, known as one of the most exciting young virtuosos of the modern fiddle, played baroque music on a period-style instrument with leading harpsichordist, Trevor Pinnock. And then, after the interval, Pinnock was found at the keyboard of a Steinway concert grand, while Vengerov enjoyed his regular modern instrumental comforts.
It was a brave undertaking on both men's behalf. Apart from some understandable small signs of strain in the less familiar territory, each demonstrated an ability to keep fully abreast of his more comfortably-equipped colleague.
In both of the Bach items, a sonata with harpsichord and the Chaconne from the D minor Partita for solo violin, Vengerov aimed for greater breadth of phrasing than period instruments' players typically do, drawing his performance of the great Chaconne well away from the current conventions of period performance. The dynamism of his handling of Corelli's La Folia, where the duo were joined by cellist Jane Coe, was in a different league. Here, in a performance that was often excitingly explosive and unusually coloured, he showed some of the freedom of fantasy that Italian musicians have been bringing to the early music scene in recent years.
It was Vengerov, too, who made the strongest impression in the second half, with wonderful elasticity of phrasing in the lilting minor section of the second movement of Mozart's K301, and a frequent spareness of vibrato in an often lean-toned reading of Beethoven's stormy C minor Sonata. The period instrument didn't have to be under his chin for his period-instruments encounter to be put to perceptive use.
