Rave reviews on USA tour with John Holloway, Jaap ter Linden and Lars Ulrik Mortensen
Photo New York Times / Erin Baiano
April's grand tour with John Holloway, Violin, Jaap ter Linden, Cello and Lars Ulrik Mortensen, Harpsichord, with their programme called 'Madcap, Red Priest and Angel', earned some rave reviews.
Washington Post
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Holloway/Linden/Mortensen Trio
The Library of Congress has hosted several of the ferocious young ensembles -- including Ensemble Matheus and the Venice Baroque Orchestra -- that have lately been shaking the dust off 18th-century music with electrifying, foot-stomping performances. Vivaldi and company needed the adrenaline desperately, but it was equally satisfying to step back and take a breath on Thursday, when three of the finest early music specialists on the scene alighted at Coolidge Auditorium to present a quieter and more intimate -- but no less involving -- take on the baroque. British violinist John Holloway, Dutch cellist Jaap ter Linden and Danish harpsichordist Lars Ulrik Mortensen make a formidable team, especially when exploring some of the less-trampled paths of the baroque. Relying less on power than on finely honed delicacy and wit, they turned their flavorful, astringent sound to good advantage in a program that included some unusual surprises. A sonata by the little-known Francesco Maria Veracini burned with dark imagination, and a trio by Boismortier -- famous mostly for his unflagging glibness -- was full of inventive, forward-looking rhythms and intriguing turns. Who knew?
The ensemble work was superb throughout, with violinist Holloway's thoughtful, clear-eyed intensity leading the way, particularly in Corelli's Sonata in E Minor, Op. 5, No. 8 -- an exercise in undiluted beauty, as far as these ears could make out. Ter Linden, whose playing is playful even at its most serious, delivered a breathtaking account of Vivaldi's Sonata No. 7 in G Minor, RV 42, for cello, while Mortensen -- dancing rapturously with his harpsichord throughout the evening -- brought off
Couperin's ineffable "Les Barricades Mistérieuses" as if it were made of pure light.
Boston Globe
By Matthew Guerrieri
Globe Correspondent April 14, 2008
CAMBRIDGE
Boston Early Music Festival trio demonstrates collaboration amid contrast
Saturday's superb Boston Early Music Festival concert by English violinist John Holloway, Dutch cellist Jaap ter Linden, and Danish harpsichordist Lars Ulrik Mortensen highlighted two early 18th-century specialties: the instrumental solo sonata (with its keyboard-and-cello continuo accompaniment) and the virtuoso violinist-composer.
Centering the program was its stylistic reference point, Arcangelo Corelli. In Corelli's E-minor Op. 5 No. 8 Sonata - performed in a composer- sanctioned keyboardles configuration - ter Linden's round, earthy timbral foundation balanced Holloway's brighter core and satin finish. Mortensen - arpeggiating and ornamentating with vibrant, virtuosic Rococo brushwork - joined ter Linden in a gorgeous rendition of Antonio Vivaldi's G-minor cello Sonata (RV 42), which refashions Corelli's pattern (the works have identical four-movement layouts) into more operatic drama, the melodies more disjunct and mercurial than Corelli's smooth intricacy. Francesco Maria Veracini took a different tack, augmenting Corelli's musical vocabulary with imaginative extravagance. The 12th and final of his Op. 2 sonatas builds each movement around a repeated, descending figure - chromatic in most cases, except for the sturdy four-note diatonic staircase of a traditional "Ciaccona" - engendering a rich profusion. (The "Scozzesse" from the ninth Sonata made a bewitching encore.) Music of Jean-Marie Leclair anchored the Francophile first half, marrying Italian rhetoric to his own French school of violin-playing. His Op. 5 No. 1 Sonata prioritizes poise: Even the finale's driving passagework pulls into an unexpectedly graceful final cadence, a hornet alighting like a butterfly. Op. 5 No. 4 showcased Holloway's violin with the sort of technical challenges one of Leclair's contemporaries described as "a kind of algebra," though the final "Chaconna" - using the same four-note bass as Veracini - was a more restrained machine than Veracini's high-performance Italian engine. Unlike Leclair or his court predecessor François Couperin (whose undulating harpsichord-solo "Les Barricades Mistérieuses" had a cameo), Joseph Bodin de Boismortier sold his music to the public rather than relying on royal patronage. His A-minor Trio (Op. 37, No. 5) was the evening's most modern-sounding piece, its three-movement structure anticipating the Classic era, some startling stoptime rhythms in the last movement looking forward seemingly further.
The fluent ensemble attested to the performers' longstanding collaboration.
Most noteworthy was the rhythmic flexibility, tempos in subtle flux without a sacrifice of momentum. But not a small part of the entertainment was the contrast in physical demeanor: Holloway's nobility Mortensen's rag-doll expressivity, te Linden's genial calm - a lion, a scarecrow, and an agile tin man, off to meet a host of Baroque wizards on happily equal terms.