Florence OrsaMichele and Uto Ughi

Yesterday, I discovered that Gaetano di Bacco was playing  Glazunov’s Saxophone Concerto Op109 in OrsaMichele(Florentines sound a hard ‘h’ for this particular church). I had never heard this work so I just had to go.

Orsanmichele (St Michael of the Vegetable Patch?) is a magnificent oratory which I usually pass several times a day. The “Or” in the name signifies that the site was once a  vegetable patch. The marvellous feature of this building is the arrangement of statues in niches around the outside of the building. They are the patron saints of the various guilds in the city. Of course the guilds were cajoled into commissioning the leading sculptors of the day to construct a marvellous array of saints.

I feared that the interior would not help the music to be played so I sat as near to the performers as possible. With so little material to absorb sound, the reverberation time was really too long for the music but it was possible to hear fairly well from my seat.

The first work, a Mozart piano concerto, was played on a model D. Normally I would prefer this but, in this acoustic, the brilliant sound tended to become confused as it reflected from surface to surface. But the warm tone of the saxophone (Don’t you prefer the Italian ‘sassofono’?) seemed to use the space.

At several points, I felt that that Gaetano di Bacco was not just playing the sassofono but also the hall itself. Actually, this was almost an imperative as his rich tone quickly exhausted the ability of the acoustics to cope; except for the first rows of seats where I was sitting of course. It’s difficult to play in this type of space but I enjoyed it despite the incredibly long reverberation time.

Today, the concert at the Verdi theatre looked inviting, I went to buy a ticket. “It’s a sellout I’m afraid” was the response at the box office. “But … “, and I waited for what he was going to offer “I have the very ticket for you. It’s in row G, the best row for sound”

He then gave me a ticket with “Uto Ughi” written in large capitals across it and a couple of lines of writing blacked out beneath. He saw my puzzlement and said, “It’s OK really. We’ll let you in tonight!!”

The sad thing about this evening was that Jeffrey Tate was due to conduct Britten’s ‘Les Illuminations’ but had cancelled because of “personal reasons”. I associate this work with illness because the last time I heard it many years ago, the conductor had also cancelled because of personal reasons of illness. Rather than cancel the performance, Peter Pears had booked a young Roumanian student who had just won a conducting competition judged by the very conductor who was indisposed. The music has a brilliant atmosphere and Peter Pears took the young conductor along with him beautifully. It was wonderful!!! Benjamin Britten was sitting in the row directly behind us.

So what were we to get instead of this? Well, they didn’t actually get another conductor!! Andrea Tacchi, a big “cheese” in Florence took the performance on as concertatore or Concert Master, I suppose we would call him. But he never stood up to lead his band. He sat where the leader always sits and directed from there.

I love seeing this sort of thing! Tacchi would lean forward to indicate a lead and of the rest of the orchestra couldn’t help doing the same!! It’s so nice seeing such a unity of purpose on this scale (8. 8. 5. 5, 3. strings), usually reserved for smaller ensembles, and the playing often reflected this.

They played a Haydn overture brilliantly and then a Bocherini Symphony with equal verve. Having a string player actually directing the performance does seem to make a big difference. I had the impression in these pieces that a conductor might not have managed to produce a performance as good as this one.

The second half of the concert consisted of the Beethoven Violin Concerto. Amazingly, the performance went extremely well. Both Tacchi and the solist Uto Ughi directed at different points in the piece. The balance with the wind was excellent apart from a slightly fruity bassoon which gave me a new insight into the importance of that instrument in this work.

I’m sure the violin Uto Ughi was playing for the concerto was the ‘Kreutzer’ Strad for obvious reasons. The way he performed reminded of the engravings I have seen of Paganini. No place for sprezzatura in this violinist’s (or Paganini’s for that matter judging from reports)vocabulary! We saw every ounce of the energy he was putting into the production of this marvellous sound. A performer often has to suffer to produce sound.
At the end of this great performance we wanted more. and Ughi is a great showman. So he said to us, “That was a difficult concerto to play, You want more?” So he started playing a magnificent cadenza which introduces the final part of the last movement and the orchestra joined him on the trill again and played to the end.

Wonderful!!!

We clapped him because we loved him He couldn’t possibly play another encore? He looked SO tired. But he returned with his violin upheld and came forward to talk to us again.

“Know this tune?” and he played that well-known phrase. “Well, it’s been used by Rachmaninov, Brahms and countless others. But it belongs to the violin. It’s ours!!!” And then he played that brilliant Paganini 24, variations. At each section he stopped, as Paganini must have done, to strip more hairs from his bow. It’s that sort of piece!!! I think I heard him say, “I ought to be paid more for playing this” This is understandable as bow rehairing can be expensive. But he did get an incredible upper body workout and we had a wonderful finale!!