For the final night of the Tetbury festival, its artistic director Jonathan Cohen brought his own ensemble, the brilliant Arcangelo, to renew their successful association with Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang, established 10 years ago when they recorded Mozart’s violin concertos.
This programme focused on baroque music and, on an evening when the heavens opened and humidity levels risked causing havoc with gut strings, the necessarily fastidious and lengthy tuning readjustment underlined the precision required. Frang, too, was using gut strings, which made for some sublime sounds. As soloist in the Bach concerto in E, BWV 1042, she stood within the body of the ensemble, communing with the players around her, taking the outer movements at a brisk speed, the passagework mercurial and with striking dynamic effects. Yet it was the exquisitely expressive central Adagio that, in this fine church acoustic, carried a transcendent quality.
