BREMF – POCKET-SIZED CLASSICS – Pocket Sinfonia
Brighton Early Music Festival (BREMF) began, on-line, with a strain of magic: an arrangement of Mendelssohn’s Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream for four players.
Rosie Bowker (flute), Eleanor Corr (violin), Mirjam Kammler (cello) and Emil Duncumb (fortepiano) sounded like a symphony orchestra sped-up, fleet and fairy-light, but in fact these brilliant artists can really play that fast, it’s just that this period ensemble emit such bright sounds. Only the cello, which doubled as a percussion instrument, delivers any rich resonance. The festival effect was augmented by some witty animation, somewhere between Lotte Reiniger and Noggin the Nog, that will definitely broaden the appeal.
![Pocket Sinfonia](https://thelatest.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Pocket-Sinfonia-23-10-20.png)
The visuals accompanying Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ Symphony were less impressive but fully justified by their expression of the Festival’s theme, environmental responsibility. The musical setting by Hummel is a delight, although at first I wondered if my audio system was rattling. It was those higher resonances again, with a delicate buzz beneath from the cello. Sometimes I could almost hear a rustic hurdy-gurdy, sometimes clarinets and brass amongst the rippling brook and bird calls. Beethoven-lite certainly, but not short-changed.
Incidentally, if you ask what Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Hummel have to do with Early Music, it’s all in the approach, reconstructing earlier performance conditions, for example by using the forte-piano and wooden flute.
This enchanting concert is available on YouTube for one week
YouTube,
23 October 2020
[rating: 4.5]
Andrew Connal