Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra – Forces of Nature: An Earth Day Celebration

Reviewed by Paula Citron

Do you know that baroque composers wrote music about frogs? That was one of the pleasures of Tafelmusik’s concept concert Forces of Nature: An Earth Day Celebration.

The music was a potpourri of Baroque bonbons accompanied by a slide show that depicted the best and the worst on earth – glorious pictures of nature set against magnificent architecture that gradually moved into slides of industrial wastelands.

The concert was conceived and programmed by Tafelmusik violinist Julia Wedman, and almost every player got a chance at a solo. The music cleverly travelled from morning until evening and featured a who’s who of Baroque composers. There were some unusual choices like Vivaldi’s “Storm at sea” accompanied by man-made buildings, but perhaps that represented the rising tide of human destruction.

For atmosphere, Glenn Davidson designed the cross-section of an antique globe that was the projection screen, while Raha Javanfar was responsible for the production design itself.

The concert was both a visual and aural delight.

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Forces of Nature: An Earth Day Celebration
Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra
Conceived and programmed by Julia Wedman
Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre, Apr. 7 to 11, 2010
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