ELEGANT costumes, yak-hair wigs and the very best of baroque will delight audiences at Aberdeen’s Music Hall tomorrow night.
The charm and elegance of the 18th century will be revived when Mozart Festival Orchestra take the stage in full period costume for The Four Seasons By Candlelight event.
Favourites such as Pachelbel’s Canon and Bach’s Air on a G String will be played alongside the work of Handel and Charpentier with appearances from soprano Elizabeth Cragg and trumpeters Crispian Steele-Perkins and Tom Rainer.
The evening’s crowning glory will be a performance of Vivaldi’s best-known work by South African-born virtuoso David Juritz, who regularly guests with the orchestra formed by promoter Raymond Gubbay in 1991 to mark the bicentenary of Mozart’s death.
David described the orchestra, which regularly performs in venues including the Barbican Hall, the Royal Festival Hall and the Royal Albert Hall, in London, as a collection of some of the best baroque players in the world.
He added: “We have played together many times and we just get up on stage and have fun. We know one another so well that we can do just about anything on stage. It is impossible for me to catch them out.”
Asked what it was like to perform in the heavily embroidered jackets and wigs, he added: “It certainly makes it hotter. My yak-hair wig is very, very warm and I have to say at first it takes a while to get used to, but we are all quite used to it now.
“I think it’s true what people say about fancy dress and how people let themselves off the leash a little bit. I think that really does happen with the orchestra as well.
“We sort of play up to the costumes as well.
“I think it keeps the performances lively and people do say that it looks really stunning.”
Last year, to mark his 50th birthday, David, who is the leader of the London Mozart Players, set out on the trip of a lifetime which saw him busk his way around the world playing Bach’s partitas and sonatas.
Setting off from London’s Turnham Green tube station with a backpack and an empty wallet, he embarked on a 60,000-mile busk, which saw him play in 50 cities spread across 24 countries on every continent except Antarctica.
The four-and-a-half-month adventure helped launch charity Musequality, which funds music education for some of the world’s poorest children.
David, who played impromptu concerts at famous landmarks including 10 Downing Street, the White House, the Eiffel Tower and Sydney Opera House, said: “It was just one of those things I realised I had to do.
“It was just the idea of walking out the front door with a violin case and completely empty wallet and seeing how far I could get.
“I’m very pleased I did it because I know if I hadn’t, it would have been there at the back of my mind gnawing away.
“I can now say I have laid that one to rest.”
Speaking about the experience, he said: “I found I was actually starving a lot of the time because I didn’t have time to eat and I didn’t have a lot of money.
“I found myself walking past restaurant tables just staring at the food on the plates.
“But I met some absolutely fantastic people and had very little hassle. I wasn’t mugged once, which is surprising, and I’m also slightly disappointed that I wasn’t arrested, either.”
He got a mixed response from audiences, earning £400 less busking outside Zurich’s Tonhalle concert hall than he has earned previously leading an orchestra on its stage, and his poorest takings came in Berlin, where he earned just £7. The best support came in London, where he earned more than £2,500 in a single outing.
David, who started playing violin when he was just five and has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician in all the UK’s major concert halls, as well as performing in America, the Far East, Europe, South Africa and Australia, said research showed that children involved in music from a young age were more likely to do well in other areas of their education and development.
He said Musequality did not aim to produce professional musicians, but rather to give vulnerable children the chance to learn skills that offer them a route out of poverty, and the chance of a life away from drugs, violence and crime.
He said: “Music is a fantastic way to develop numeracy skills as well as building social skills, like working as part of a team and self-esteem.
“By setting up community music projects, we hope to give children the chance to change their lives.”
Musequality has raised £75,000 since it was launched last year and is currently running four projects in Africa, including a major project to set up a school in Uganda’s capital city, Kampala.
The Four Seasons by Candlelight will be at the Music Hall tomorrow night at 7.30pm. For tickets, visit www.boxofficeaberdeen.com or call 01224 641122.