Royal Festival Hall, London
The period instrument orchestra’s late 19th and early 20th-century programme showcased its agility and velvety warmth but more precision – in terms of the instruments used – would be welcome
Having thoroughly colonised the 18th and early 19th centuries, the period-instrument movement is now making inroads into late Romanticism and early modernism. François-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles have led the way with their exploration of the turn of the 20th century French repertoire, and here was the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, with conductor Maxim Emelyanychev, applying their historical expertise to Slavonic and Nordic music of the same period.
Where orchestras such as Les Siècles meticulously list the historical provenance of the instruments they use in every concert, the OAE has never offered such information, inviting the suspicion that in their mixed programmes one size might fit all. Here, for instance, it seemed as though the same woodwind and brass instruments were being used for the overture to Glinka’s Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila, which began the concert, as for Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony which ended it, yet the two works were premiered more than 70 years apart, in a period when the design of woodwind in particular was evolving rapidly, and taking different paths in different parts of Europe. Surely the point of period performance is not just to conjure up a vague aura of authenticity, but to get as close as possible to the sound world a composer imagined for his music, and in the early modern period, that requires much more historical precision.
The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment are at The Anvil, Basingstoke, on 5 April.
