University of Virginia Library

Erratic

The concert of Tuesday evening
was erratic in quality; the
performances of the first two
selections - the Sonata a Quatro in
G by Giuseppe Tartini, and the
Concerto a Cinque in D, Op. 9, No.
7, by Tomaso Albinoni - were
precise but uninspired. Both of
these works cried out for the
application of certain principles of
Baroque performance practice, and
it is incomprehensible that, with a
harpsichord on the stage, no
continuo was played in these two
compositions in which the
realization of the figured bass is a
necessity

The dullness of the Albinoni and
Tartini pieces was not entirely the
fault of I Solisti Veneti. A great
deal of Baroque music was written
either as background music or as
music which-gave the performers
both a challenge and pleasure in
playing them. Often interest in
these works cannot be sustained
when they are listened to carefully.
Furthermore, Albinoni had
tendency to wear out motifs, and,
to my mind, he could waste more
time over the same notes spread out
over the same chords that any
composer I have ever heard.

The second half of the concert
opened with the only 20th century
composition on the program,
Silvano Bussotti's Marbres, a
fascinating, free-form, atonal
composition for antiphonally
grouped strings. I Solisti Veneti
brought the work off beautifully
and set the tone for a second half
of the concert that was much
superior to the first.

To dispel the mistaken belief
that the double-bass cannot be an
effective solo instrument, Leonardo
Colonna, the group's double-bass
player, performed the Introduction
and Allegro for Double-Bass.
Strings, and Triangle by the 19th
century Italian double-bass
virtuoso, Domenico Dragonetti. In
this humorous bravura
composition, Colonna succeeded in
coaxing from his ungainly
instrument a dark, rich tone
reminiscent of the cello tone of
Pablo Casals.