As a period continues

We often use the term chamber music for smaller groups playing older music in smaller spaces but when I heard Austral Harmony at Sally and Peter's Greenaway studio I felt it like never before.  They played earlier music, Bach with original instruments, as a trio in a small space and the intimacy was immense, if intimacy can be immense.  It's not as if there was not a decent audience and a few mic stands, but the closeness and the tone of these instruments, baroque oboe/recorder/oboe da caccia, baroque violin, harpsichord, and the immediacy of performance and casual interactions were different.  Austral Harmony was on a tour of various Australian cities while Jane is visiting from the UK and Canberra got a weekend of Bach performances.  I caught Jane at Wesley on Wednesday, but only one performance over the weekend.  This was called Bach Obbligato and they performed selections that they had workshopped just hours before.  I'd learnt something of obbligato, the necessity of the obbligato parts and presumably a flexibility with parts not so defined.  It's a pointer to improvisation practised in that era, with figured bass and basso continuo and maybe more.  All fascinating and prompted by the immediacy of this chamber music experience with these knowledgeable exponents.  But a note on the performers.  These were confident in interplay, aptly solid and throaty in tone, at least for the violin and oboes -  the harpsichord was more tinkly - and all confident in interplay.  Capable proponents of period music and deeply satisfying and informative for that.

Austral Harmony performed Bach at the Greenaway Studio.  AH comprised Jane Downer (baroque oboes, recorder), Margaret Caley (baroque violin) and Phillip Gearing (harpsichord).  An attendee from the preceding workshop played flute on an opening piece from St Matthew Passion but I missed his name.