Classical review: Dunedin Consort, Edinburgh Queen’s Hall

The Dunedin Consort is bringing all six of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos to life in a series of three concerts over the coming months in Edinburgh and Perth.

The first of the Edinburgh concerts established the template for the series, which sees each programme combine two of the famous concerti grossi with two Bach Cantatas.

On Friday, Dunedin’s resident Bach guru, John Butt, directed the third and fifth, revealing in the latter – with its fiendish and, for its time, shockingly unorthodox cadenza – his own demonic virtuosity on the harpsichord. Butt’s feverish spontaneity imbued it – and subsequently the entire concerto – with an edge-of-the-seat thrill factor that never once overstepped stylistic bounds.

Yet there was something alluringly fragile and intimate in all the evening’s performances, arising partly from the delicacy of the period instruments themselves, especially the small-scaled Baroque flute; but equally from the players’ generosity to each other in recognising when to pipe down and allow a line to be articulated without the necessity to over-project.

Brandenburg No 3 was a case in point, its democratic scoring delivered with effortless fun and fulfilment, despite an ultimately unconvincing attempt to let the final bar simply disappear into the ether. It needed a cadential gesture to define its purpose, rather than the emergency stop that took place.

The two Cantatas – Nos 156 & 72 – were an effective juxtaposition, in which the vocal corps of one-singer-per-part was a perfect balance for the ecstatic intimacy and clear delivery of the music.

More to come in this fascinating series.

Rating: ****