Virtuosic Vivaldi
by Stephen Martorella
Violinist Chad Hoopes with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra wowed Friday’s opening night audience of Newport Classical Music Festival.
In the opulent splendor and magnificent acoustics of the Breakers Great Hall, overlooking the sea, the Grammy Award winning conductorless ensemble delivered with virtuosity, precision, and joie de vivre on a sonic palette rich and vibrant. A glance at the program suggested a bow to the Baroque, but the realization provided interpretations, techniques, arrangements, and stylings that were at times lush and romantic, and elsewhere quite novel, modern, even jazzy.
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The players recognized the 81-year-old American composer Adolphus Hailstork with his 1992 Sonata da Chiesa, a work of reverent lyric and tonal writing, much of it in counterpoint. The orchestra made use of textures in this work by using three levels of orchestras, recalling Ralph Vaughan Williams’s three orchestras for the Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, pitting a solo group against a mid-layer of first desk players, with the full complement for the thickest and richest sections. Movement titles Exaltation, O Great Mystery, Adoration, Jubiliation, O Lamb of God, Grant Us Thy Peace, Exaltation—appeared in the printed essay, but not on the title page. Orpheus’s sensitivity and expressivity, left us with a serene sense of peace and wonder, ending on a note of quiet joy.
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