The baroque shows it’s humor

 

For the Christmas concert of the association „friends of young musicians“ the ensemble „Il Botto Forte“ brought much joy of playing into Bad Homburg’s palace chapel.

 

By Michael Dellith

 

Baroque music doesn’t always need to be solemn – and not dry or humorless at all. The ensemble „Il Botto Forte“, that carries the „bang“ in its name, showed at his christmas concert, that ancient music can be also very witty. The five musicians, Shai Kribus (oboe and recorder), Christian Voß (baroque violin), Alexandra Polin (viola), Ziv Braha (lute) and Damien Desbenoit (harpsichord), got together only two years ago. But their team spirit is so strong, that they build together a group, in which everybody is perfectly attuned to each other.

 

One could feel from the first note, that most of these young talents received their musical education at Basel’s prestigious Schola Cantorum. Stylistically confident and having their instruments down to very a fine art, with beautiful sound and an amazingly breathing phrasing, they led through a program, that showed the humorous side of baroque music – e.g. in the eccentric dialogue between oboe and violin in Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s trio sonata „Sanguineus und Melancholicus“, with the virtuoso imitations of the trio sonata in F-Major op. 1, No. 6 by William Williams, or with the ironic reverence to Lully by François Couperin. Beyond question: The ensemble „Il Botto Forte“ carries a new spirit into the early-music-scene and was a lucky find for the association „friends of young musicians“, which arose from the Leyda-Ungerer-Musikkreis and is promoting young talents now for 50 years.