Quebec based Les Violons du Roy performed on Sunday at Koerner Hall with soprano Karina Gauvin and contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux. The music was all drawn from Handel’s English language oratorios and featured orchestral pieces and a number of arias and duets. These works are some of my favourites so I was a bit surprised that I didn’t enjoy the concert as much as I expected.
Last night Philippe Jaroussky appeared with Les Violins du Roy and conductor Matthieu Lussier in a mostly Handel program at Koerner Hall. It was a very good evening. Les Violons du Roy is a pretty small band; less than twenty including continuo, but they manage to produce quite a big sound while remaining elegant and flexible in a thoroughly idiomatic baroque way. The instrumental component consisted of a Handel overture, Fux’ Ouverture in D minor and Johann Gottlieb Graun’s (not the better known Carl Graun who was apparently his brother) Symphony in B Flat Major. It was a pretty good sampling of what one might have heard in the courts of Germany in the early 1700s and rather enjoyable.
operaramblings 