In a familiar programme in appropriately beautiful surroundings, Trevor Pinnock and his ensemble played with technical precision and customary purity, but also a very earthy tenderness with which JS Bach himself (father of 20 children, let’s not forget) was presumably quite familiar.
The airs and dances from Purcell’s Fairy Queen proved a sparkling aperitif to the meat of the first half: Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No 5 – the first ever solo keyboard concerto. Pinnock attacked the bristling cadenza in the first movement with the dazzling zeal that has made him a baroque trailblazer.
Playing on a harpsichord made in Dresden to specifications that Bach would have recognised, Pinnock explained that the austerity of its appearance belied its range. He was right. The breadth and depth of sound was extraordinary, and the concerto, which Pinnock must have played at least as many times before as the audience must have heard it, proved a revelation.
Bach’s Suite No 2 in B Minor put the spotlight firmly on the ensemble, particularly flautist Katy Bircher whose lyrical, expressive warmth was complemented in the lower register by James Munro’s violone (a baroque double bass) and Jonathan Manson’s cello, who together produced a rich, sonorous undertow throughout.
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