Mandolin Virtuoso Avi Avital Brings Venetian Bonbons to Southern California
/By Truman C. Wang
11/14/2024
avi avital, esteli gomez
The Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, with famed Israeli mandolin virtuoso Avi Avital, brought Venice to Southern California in a 3-city tour this week. The program was both delightful and ingenious, combining Vivaldi’s familiar “Four Seasons” with the less-familiar Venetian gondola songs. Art music and pop music of the Baroque era received the same serious treatment and performed with joyful spirit.
In the opening work, Vivaldi’s Concerto in G minor (RV 156), the 17 musicians of the Philharmonia Baroque played with irrepressible energy and breathed together as one, in addition to being virtuosos of their respective instruments. After the short concerto, Esteli Gomez, the soprano soloist, sang two gondola songs ("Si', la gondola avere, no crie", "L'occasion delle mie pene,") in the Venetian dialect. Her light, sweet timbre suited well these street songs of Venice; one could easily imagine hearing them echoing throughout the canals on a moonlit night. Avital managed to turn his toy-like instrument into a thing of beauty, tempering its bright, raspy sound with finesse and grace.
In Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons”, the mandolin replaced solo violin; the results were revelatory and entertaining. Instead of larks singing in “Spring”, we heard larks and a lone woodpecker frolicking in a singing contest; “Summer” brought out the darker sounds of the mandolin in a fiery midsummer tempest; “Autumn”, a season of harvests and falling leaves, resonated with pastoral richness and melancholy undertones; In “Winter”, the mandolin added a layer of frost to the icicles of string arpeggios. (During the largo, a vocal cadenza, or song of solitude, was interpolated near the end, sung by Ms. Gomez while ‘passing through’ the wintry scene.) Throughout these four concerti, Avital’s mandolin playing was at once nuanced and sparkling, blending with the strings in a most enjoyable vein.
More gondola songs were sandwiched in between the four concerti, serving as delectable antipasti or dolci between the main courses. They also showed complete rapport between Avital and Gomez. “Semplicetta è la farfalle” featured lovely mandolin obbligato, fluttering like a ‘farfalle’ (butterfly) around the soprano; "Co' Checca, Betta e Catte" ended with a mandolin solo and the continuo (harpsichord, theorbo, gamba) playing a comical, droning accompaniment; "Chi no gha la borsa grossa" saw the mandolin and the soprano engaging in a good-natured banter. It’s all fun and game, Venetian-style.
The only opera aria in the program, "Lo seguitai felice" from Vivaldi's L'Olimpiade, allowed Ms. Gomez to shine with soaring, radiant high notes, a gentle cantabile full of longing, and a joyful, lavishly embellished da capo of great power and agility. Underneath the surface glitter beats a heart of a determined lover, unfazed by fiery storms. Historically, eighteenth-century Venetian operas get a bad rap for frivolity. “Lo sequitai felice” proves this need not be the case.
As is usually the case, it was the encore, “La biondina in gondoleta”, not the main program, that sent the audience into the streets humming with delight. It’s a sweet little serenade to conclude the evening like a delicious serving of tiramisu.
The concert on Sunday, November 10 was presented by the Philharmonic Society of Orange County and took place at the Soka University campus in Aliso Viejo, The Soka auditorium was designed by acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota (who also did the Disney Hall), and one could hear the same warmth in the strings and clarity of voices, despite the Soka being a much smaller hall (1,032 seats, built in 2011). On the flip side, the little noises from the audience also came across loud and clear. Design-wise, the Soka’s rows of seats are more steeply raked, but the layout is basically identical – open stage surrounded by audience, Douglas fir paneling the walls and floors, thickly upholstered seats, even down to the curved mechanical equipment above the stage.
I also attended their Wednesday, November 13 concert at the Soraya, on the Cal State Northridge campus. Also built in 2011, the 1690-seat hall is an impressively modern glass-and-steel design with white travertine on the exterior, and a traditional horseshoe inside (with acoustic panels above the stage, where there are none at the Soka). Disappointingly, I was unable to assess the hall’s acoustics, as the small audience were all packed onstage with the musicians. The sound was good and clear enough, if a bit dry, and would have benefited from more breathing room. The concert ended abruptly after “Winter”, without the “La biondina” encore, on account of a medical emergency. A real bummer. I am glad I attended the Soka concert, but will return to the Soraya at a later date.
Truman C. Wang is Editor-in-Chief of Classical Voice, whose articles have appeared in the Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, other Southern California publications, as well as the Hawaiian Chinese Daily. He studied Integrative Biology and Music at U.C. Berkeley.