‘Phil, do we have clearance?” A thumb shot out from the gallery above the stage. The musicians of period-performance outfit Figure giggled, then plunged into Vivaldi’s Concerto for Strings in D minor (“Madrigalesco”), its opening gestures drawn out in fierce, even bowstrokes. Not a hint of vibrato to warm the tone. They tightened the screws on the concerto’s already weird harmonies with some artfully dissonant pitching. In the fast movements, the ensemble clicked together like a mechanical device, Vivaldi’s passagework suddenly animated by fizzing energy and punchy attack.
Then a scramble to swap bows – out with baroque curves, in with the modern – while Figure’s co-artistic director, Frederick Waxman, introduced Caroline Shaw’s Punctum, the first of the concert’s four contemporary works. Punctum shadow-boxes with a passage from Bach’s St Matthew Passion. Resonances pass in slow-motion ricochet across the string orchestra, gradually accelerating into something that approaches a Bach chorale heard at multiple times the usual speed. The performance was spikily stylish, segueing with ease from moments of razor-sharp crunchiness to quotations from Bach’s own score.
