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Concert review: Euphonia finds right mix and balance at Lula Lounge concert series

By John Terauds on August 12, 2013

Euphonia violinist Tanya Charles was also a soloist at Lula Lounge on Monday night (John Terauds phone photo).
Euphonia violinist Tanya Charles was also a soloist at Lula Lounge on Monday night (John Terauds phone photo).

Founding music director Simon Capet has over the course of the past few months created a fine chamber orchestra from scratch in Euphonia, which delivered its best concert yet on Monday night at Lula Lounge.

The 14 musicians and their conductor filled the club with the sounds of the classical era as they offered up a late-18th century programme featuring the music of Giovanni Paisiello, Antonio Salieri, Mozart and Joseph Haydn.

The Paisiello piece was his overture to The Barber of Seville — popular before Rossini got his paws on the libretto more than a generation later. Salieri and Haydn contributed symphonies and Mozart his early Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major, K218, with Euphonia member Tanya Charles as soloist.

Capet laid down his baton to let Charles lead the ensemble during the Mozart work, describing it as the ultimate trust test for an orchestra. Capet likened Charles’s playing with a conductorless backup group to an acting student being certain that they will be caught when falling backwards with eyes closed.

The result from the other musicians was a bit timid, but Charles was on fire. Her playing was colourful and bold — and she contributed her own cadenzas in the second and third movements with a clear sense of humour.

Her enthusiasm must’ve been contagious, because when the group returned to the Lula Lounge dancefloor for the Salieri and Haydn symphonies after a break, the ensemble was tight and focused — finally delivering a fine, professional sound worthy of a good chamber orchestra.

(Having Salieri and Haydn’s music performed side by side was also an object lesson in why history venerates some composers and casts others aside.)

As has been the case for every other Euphonia concert, the club was full, with people from all demographic backgrounds enjoying food and drink along with the orchestra — and as has usually been the case at that venue, the performance garnered respectful silence despite Capet’s assurances that it would be fine to sip, eat and tweet mid-music.

Capet has been choosing the group’s repertoire wisely, allowing him to demonstrate how having one instrument per part can be just as effective and beautiful as the multiples in a full-size symphony orchestra. The smaller group as well as the proximity between audience and musicians has also given each concert a special intimacy.

And now the musical chemistry is there, too. It bodes well for the group’s future.

John Terauds

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