Members of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra played the 18th-century equivalent of musical comfort food in a program titled "Baroque by Candlelight" on Thursday night at Little Rock's Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.
The finale for this season's Intimate Neighborhood Concerts series might have almost been titled "Baroque by Handel-light," since a goodly portion of the program featured tunes by the worthy George Frideric -- starting with the "Entrance of the Queen of Sheba" from the oratorio Solomon and concluding with the second suite from The Water Music. The former showcased a pair of oboe players; the latter, though a bit on the stately side, provided good turns for two standing trumpeters and two standing horn players.
In between, conductor Philip Mann paid considerable attention to dynamics and phrasing in the Suite No. 3 in D major by Johann Sebastian Bach, particularly in the sweetly done second movement, the uber-familiar, so-called "Air on the G String." Reducing the strings to one player on a part in the repeats allowed him to control the terraced dynamics even further.
Gabriel Vega earned a standing ovation as soloist in Antonio Vivaldi's C major Piccolo Concerto, which in turn earned the audience an encore (and it was better than the concerto): the finale from Bach's Suite No. 2, an octave up from the usual flute solo and with just a touch of syncopation.
The concert, which lasted just over an hour with no intermission, sought to reproduce the mood (and flicker) of the "Mozart by Candlelight" concert the orchestra put on this time last year at the cathedral.
There were actual, factual candles all around the altar area (the ones in jars above the pews were battery-operated), but the players got most of their illumination from stand lights and a couple of electric-powered overhead chandelier fixtures.
Metro on 05/15/2015