I attended the concert on Sunday night; the programme was on Italian Baroque music, which of course included the famous The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi.
That was the main reason I attended the performance and certainly something I did not regret at all.
A superb performance, that I gave my first standing ovation.
The musical performance was held at the School of the Arts (SOTA) concert hall.
The hall wasn't too big probably 300-400 seater? and this is actually good IMO as they didn't need any artificial amplification of the sound.
After a short wait, the I Musici maestros slowly emerged from the hidden door on the right.
There were 6 violinist, 2 viola player, 2 cellist and 1 double bassist and 1 harpsichordist in the 12 member group.
1st Violin
Antonio Anselmi plays a Nicolo Amati 1676 Cremona
Marco Serino plays a Nicolo Amati 1661 Cremona
Ettore Pellegrino plays a G. Cappa 1675 Saluzzo (not sure if he belongs to 1st violin or 2nd)
2nd Violin
Pasquale Pellegrino plays a G. Cappa 1691 Saluzzo
Claudio Buccarella plays a G.B. Ceruti 1796 Cremona
Gianluca Apostoli plays a G. Pressenda 1821 Torino
Viola
Massimo Paris plays a P. Guarneri 1697 Mantua
Silvio di Rocco plays a M. Blaurock (after A. Amati) 1574 Cremona
Cello
Vito Paternoster plays a L. Carcassi 1780 Firenze
Pietro Bosna plays a L. Storioni 1791 Cremona
Double Bass
Roberto Gambioli plays a X. Jacquet 1860 Mirecourt
Cembalo
Francesco Buccarella plays a F. Betternhausen 1993 Haarlem
What is amazing about this concert is that, they all used historic instruments for this concert include 2 Nicolo Amati (used by the 2 first violinist / soloist, Antonio Anselmi, and Marco Serino)
They began their programme with a Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) number: RV157 Concerto in G minor for Violin, Strings and Basso Continuo.
Wow, that's what I thought when I heard the power and unity of the ensemble.
Their playing is definitely 1st class.
Next to come was RV531 Concerto in G minor for 2 cello, Strings and Basso Continuo.
What a dialogue of the 2 soloist cello!
Vivaldi's dual concerto often encompass wonderful dialogue between the 2 soloist.
After that they performed a Violin Concerto in D major with Marco Serino as the soloist.
Marco's superb intonation at the high D notes region was amazing.
This piece had a soloist cadenza passage, which Marco nailed it down very well.
Finally the 1st half ended with a Theme and variation of the famous theme "La Folia"
by Francesco Geminiani (1687-1762)
The 2nd half was the famous The Four Seaons (Le Quattro Stagioni) with Antonio Anselmi as the soloist.
He had liberty at playing some of the soloist part, but the coordination was excellent.
Never once had they gone out of coordination.
Their understanding of one another was truly impressive.
I particularly like the Summer 1st movement and 3rd movement; I could hear the cuckoo and flinch answering to one another and flash of lightning across the summer storm sky.
However, the most well received piece by the floor, was Winter 1st movement Allegro non molto.
It was because immediately after that movement was played, everyone clapped.
Usually the audience waited for the end of the 3 movements before they gave applause; for the 4 seaons the entire 4 concerti but I guess this work was so wonderfully played that everyone applauded.
Finally after the entire thing, the audience gave a thunderous applause.
I too was so impressed with their performance that I gave them a standing ovation as many other audience did.
The I Musici went in and came out and line up in front of the stage.
The audience wanted more from them and they happily obliged to give us 1st encore piece by Rossini.
Each time the pieces were humorously introduced by the cellist Vito Paternoster.
Subsequently the process repeated and the audience gave thunderous encouragement to them for another encore piece.
They brought us another opera piece.
And finally after they went in they were brought out again by the thunderous applause and gave their final encore piece an Allegro by Vivaldi.
After the concert I went for the autographing session and told them personally "Grazie" my thanks to them for bring a wonder and enjoyable concert to us.
Vivaldi was my favourite composer amongst all the composers that I like and "Le Quattro stagoioni" of the opus 8 "Il Cimento del' armonia dell inventione" is the 1st classical piece that brought me into playing music. Following that I listen many other Vivaldi works including the L'Estro Armonico op3, La Stravaganza op. 4, La Cetra op.9, 6 flute concerto Opus 10, many other concerto for various instrument like 2 mandolins RV 532, lute RV93, mandolin RV 425. Trio Sonatas etc...
I would rate this as my most enjoyable concert to date.
Here are the pics:
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