La serva padrona in the Helsinki Music Centre, the 21st of August, 2018

Helsinki Festival programme contains every year some special classical pieces. This year they had managed with the favourable support of the Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation to get an especially exciting visitor – the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra. It is one of the best known baroque orchestras in the world and directed by Gottfried von der Goltz, who also plays violin in the orchestra.

My first surprise I got when the orchestra marched to the stage, because they played a major part of the evening standing, which in some performances seemed to give to the playing some extra energy, relaxedness, almost folk music type of beat. The music played was, of course, baroque, but with a twist.

The concert consisted of works of two major baroque composers. There were two concerto grossos from Arcangelo Corelli (Concerto grosso No 3 in C minor and Concerto grosso No 1 in D-major) and Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s work “Salve Regina” plus his opera “La serva padrona”. The choices reflected the career of the composers quite well, since today Corelli is known for his instrumental pieces (which he mainly composed) and Pergolesi is famous for his vocal music.

Corelli’s concerto grossos made a great impression at least on me. The C minor and D-major pieces were clearly different. I especially admired the oboe parts of the first piece (Katharina Arfken and Maike Buhrow), but in both concerto grossos the wind instruments were superb in general. The second piece was almost completely “Allegro” and I absolutely loved the “discussions” between the violins. I got a really strong feeling that the musicians enjoyed playing in Helsinki.

The soloist in Pergolesi’s ”Salve Regina” was Sunhae Im (soprano). The music was beautiful, but I was not fully happy with the rather delicate voice of Im. “Salve Regina” is a religious piece and somehow in my ears the performance lacked a bit of strength.  

Im sang also in ”La serva padrona” the role of Serpina and that was a more solid performance from her. The story is the same as in ”La serva padrona” by Paisiello that I saw in June: the servant (Serpina) yearns to marry her master Uberto (baritone Furio Zanasi). She conspires with another servant (Vespone – a silent role played by the director of the opera, Tristan Braun) and in the end Uberto and Serpina end up married (in this version rather happily). Im made Serpina a girlish, wily and playfull seductress. The shrew that was seen in the Paisiello production was pretty much invisible. Uberto was a more non-descript figure than in the Paisiello production and clearly in the shadow of Serpina. Both operas had their star moments, but to me the Paisiello production ended up as a winner. I can still remember the fine arias by Antti Pakkanen as Uberto in Suomenlinna, when in comparison none of the Zanasi arias made quite the same impression.