Tim Homfray visits London’s Wigmore Hall on 18 November 2024 for the performance of Brescianello, Gregori, Gnocchi, Vivaldi, Valentini, Facco and Durante

La Serenissima

A musical tour of seven cities from La Serenissima. Photo: Wigmore Hall Trust 2024

This concert was titled ‘Giro d’Italia’ – a tour of Italy – with works from seven cities by six lesser-known composers but with Vivaldi at its centre. Giuseppe Antonio Brescianello represented Bologna with a Sinfonia-Suite in C minor from 1738, played with crisp articulation and rhythmic vitality.

Moving to Lucca, Giovanni Lorenzo Gregori’s String Concerto no.6 in A minor opened with earnest bustling, before clipped dotted rhythms took over. There was rich, expressive playing from the violas in the Largo opening of Pietro Gnocchi’s Sixth String Concerto in B flat major (we were now in Brescia), followed by a nifty dancing Allegro in which the players leant into the suspensions to fine effect.

La Serenissima’s director Adrian Chandler was the soloist in Vivaldi’s D minor Concerto RV235 (from Venice, obviously). His playing was precise, elegant and nimble in the opening Allegro non molto, his passagework fluent and subtly moulded. After a limpid Adagio he dashed off spiccatos and double-stops with flair in the final Allegro.

The musicians reached Rome after the interval with Giuseppe Valentini’s Ninth String Concerto in E flat, in which Chandler emerged triumphant from a finger-twisting 50-bar chordal passage. In Palermo, Giacomo Facco’s Seventh Violin Concerto in C major featured great athletic solo playing from Chandler.

Finally landing in Naples, the Ricercar and Finale from Francesco Durante’s Fourth String Concerto in E minor swept along on a tide of rhythmically upbeat chromaticisms. It was all played with great style and panache.

TIM HOMFRAY