Napoli illustrissima for Freunde Alter Musik Basel
I was very glad to wake up from my lockdown hibernation to play a recital in Basel’s famous early music concert series Freunde Alter Musik Basel - in lockdown mode, of course, without audience but with superb audio and video recording by Oren Kirschenbaum.
The programme was an extended version of the recital wich Neapolitan repertoire Johannes Keller, Daniel Rosin and I performed at the Utrecht Early Music Festival in 2019. In addition to the regular sonatas by Mascitti, Piani and Cailò and the solo pieces by Matteis and Scarlatti we played one more sonata from the Di Martinelli collection, by Antonio “il Gobbo” Lonati, and a cello sonata attributed to Alessandro Scarlatti which fitted perfectly into the programme.
I had played concerts without audience before, but this was a new experience because we were performing with only three players. It seems easier to play such streaming concerts with bigger groups, because then you can disappear into the crowd. Since there are always people around you, you are a little more distracted from the fact that you play for an empty hall: you can at least play for your colleagues.
But in this case we had to carry everything ourselves, which led to a totally different concentration. It basically felt like a CD recording in one take, which doesn’t inspire to take risks like we normally do on stage. Still, it was an interesting experience to me.
We also decided to go for a casual set up and a relaxed way of moving, avoiding to pretend that there was an audience in order to make the situation less awkward.
The whole video is not (yet) available online, but five excerpts have been published on FAMB’s Youtube channel, one of which is linked below. The full audio stream, which has been broadcasted on the radio on March 16, 2021, is available here.