Europa Galante
Hong Kong City Hall Concert Hall
The Europa Galante ensemble, founded by Italian violinist Fabio Biondi in 1990, has helped establish a flashy and exciting Italian style of baroque period performance.
The audience at City Hall on Saturday night witnessed a fiery collective spirit when Biondi led the performance in the first of two Arts Festival concerts.
The group, presenting a force of 12 strings plus harpsichord and theorbo (bass lute), played nine sinfonias and concertos by Italian baroque composers including Sammartini, Corelli, Vivaldi, Geminiani and the two Scarlattis. Cohesion and rapport were generally awe-inspiring, with tutti playing that ebbed and flowed seamlessly together, lively instrumental dialogues and versatile continuo support.
The first work in the programme - Sammartini's Sinfonia in F major - betrayed some signs of warming-up, but otherwise, whether it was the evolving texture in the Grave movement of Alessandro Scarlatti's sinfonia from the serenade Clori, Dorino e Amore or the dramatic contrapuntal writing in the last movement of Geminiani's Concerto Gross (Op 3/2) - to quote just two examples - the ensemble combined Italian suavity with refreshing clarity.