Robert McDuffie brings his Rome Chamber Music Festival back to the Eternal City in the beautiful month of June, that he has been doing since he first fell in love with the city in 2003. Now firmly established since 2022 in the historic Teatro Argentina McDuffie brings an eclectic choice of repertoire where established artists and exceptional emerging performers join forces to fill this noble edifice with music once more .
The historic Teatro Argentina that has stood in the centre of Rome since 1732 and hosted the premiere of the Barber of Seville in 1816 and the concerts of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia for a period after Mussolini had demolished the Augusteo to bring to light the Mausoleum on which it had arisen.
An eclectic choice of music that saw the first night presenting two works by Vivaldi and Handel that had received their premieres in Rome.
Vivaldi’s Sinfonia in C was first performed in 1724 at the nearby Teatro Capranica and the cantata by Handel Aminta e Fillide was written for the Marquis Ruspoli ‘s Arcadian Academy in 1707. There were no opportunities of writing opera in that period and so the cantata form flourished with Handel writing a secular cantata each week for Ruspoli’s outdoor meetings held during his soggiorn in the Eternal City from 1707 to 1710.
Another work written in 1936 by Samuel Barber whilst on a scholarship at the American Academy in Rome was his only string quartet. Its first performance in December that year was at the American Academy of Villa Medici . The slow movement was subsequently orchestrated for string orchestra and as the Adagio for strings was launched to fame by Toscanini in 1938 with his NBC Symphony Orchestra.
All this had been prepared by McDuffie but first he had taken up his violin and opened the festival with Saint-Saëns Fantaisie for Violin and Harp . As an old man Saint -Saëns wrote it whilst touring the Mediterranean for the Eissler sisters, receiving its premiere though in London’s Aeolian Hall on July 3rd 1907 .
Mc Duffie and Virginia Vignera playing without the score as the music wove in and out in an extraordinary cat and mouse performance showing us what chamber music playing is really about .
Superb chamber music playing followed with the Barber Quartet played by four players that played as one, such was their mutual anticipation and mastery . After the interval a large group gathered around David Belkovski’s harpsichord as he drove this magnificent ensemble to heights of refined and at times passionate music making .
Maddalena De Biasi and Lilliana Zolotoukhina were the two sopranos in the Handel Cantata who added great theatricality to their extraordinary wide ranging tessitura.
Welcome back to Rome ……Robert McDuffie we have missed you
https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/12/05/ileana-and-joan-3rd-december-2023/
ChristopherAxworthy-MusicCommentary 