Prom 41: Ensemble Resonanz/Minasi review – soloists shine in underpowered Mozart programme

Based at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, Ensemble Resonanz is a chamber orchestra that performs on modern instruments (except for its natural horns and trumpets) in a “historically informed” style. The group does not have a music director, but Riccardo Minasi is its chief guest conductor, and he was in charge for their debut at the Proms, in an all-Mozart programme.
On paper it looked an utterly delectable concert – two of Mozart’s greatest orchestral works, the Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola, K364, and the Jupiter Symphony, K551, each prefaced by an operatic overture, to The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni. But somehow the music never came to life. Everything seemed distant, detached and uninvolving, and for once the Albert Hall itself was not entirely to blame, even though a relatively small band of fewer than 40 players was never going to fill such a space with sound.
Neither was there anything amiss with Resonanz’s playing, which was clearly articulated and well integrated, even if the timpani playing seemed a bit overenthusiastic at times. As the late Charles Mackerras showed so often in his Mozart recordings with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, combining what we know of 18th-century performing techniques with the resources of a contemporary band can yield remarkable results. But here that sense of revelation, of finding something new in music that is so well known, just never materialised, and even the extraordinary fugal finale of the Jupiter Symphony failed to generate the adrenaline rush it usually does.
Certainly Minasi’s choice of tempi, almost invariably fast, did not help, and neither did his tendency to signal transitions in the music with exaggerated changes of speed and dynamic or self-conscious pauses that only destroyed any sense of coherence. The best, most engaging moments in the concert came from the two soloists in the Sinfonia Concertante, with Clara-Jumi Kang’s neat, silvery violin playing complemented and contrasted with Timothy Ridout’s effortlessly eloquent viola, though in the central Andante particularly they could have benefited from more expressive freedom than Minasi’s tempo allowed them.
Bantering with the promenaders and delivering a lengthy spoken introduction to the ensemble’s encore, the finale from Mozart’s Haffner Symphony, K385, Minasi clearly enjoyed himself; somehow, though, that enjoyment wasn’t always transmitted as it should have been.