The Irish Baroque Orchestra celebrates its 10th birthday with two Easter concerts. Arminta Wallace enters its special sound-world
To the converted, a live performance of baroque music played on period instruments is an exhilarating, visceral experience - the musical equivalent of snowboarding, perhaps. And if the Irish Baroque Orchestra has its way, Irish audiences will be converted before you can say "downhill krummhorn slalom".
Founded in 1996 by the conductor Mark Duley and the baroque violinist Thérèse Timoney, the band is celebrating a decade of baroque music-making with concerts in Dublin and Galway during Easter Week. But what, can Duley explain, makes this kind of music so attractive?
"My first experience of baroque music was when I was a student in Auckland in the 1980s," he says. "And it was one of the most amazing things that has ever happened to me. I came from a sort of back-blocks New Zealand farm where we didn't have orchestras, let alone baroque orchestras. What was so special for me was the combination of period music and period instruments, which seemed to fit together like hand and glove. It was a sort of voyage of discovery for everybody in New Zealand, in fact, because at that time no one had really heard this kind of music on this kind of instrument. It was pioneering stuff."
What has come to be known as period instrument performance began in the 1950s, when it occurred to musicologists that the accepted way of playing, say Bach, was doing the music no favours at all. In the years after Bach and Handel died, musical fashions changed. Concert halls got bigger; as a result, certain instruments changed beyond recognition while others died out altogether. The trend continued throughout the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, with orchestras taking much the same approach to baroque music as they would to Brahms symphonies.
The period performance movement aimed to get back to something closer to the kind of sound Bach and Handel might actually recognise. Smaller orchestral forces and faster tempi came into play. To late 20th-century ears, it was a revelation.
"I remember the first time I ever heard the Bach B Minor Mass played on original instruments," says Tim Thurston, founder of the Early Music Association of Ireland and presenter of Gloria, a programme of baroque music that goes out every Sunday on Lyric FM. "I had sung it with the Guinness Choir maybe 20 times. I thought I knew the music. But when I heard it played on period instruments, I heard music that I didn't know at all. Clarity and brilliance - the clean brilliance of contrapuntal lines - to me, that's the attraction."
The use of period instruments is the key factor in explaining the radically different sound-world. "It's partly because of the way the instruments are made," says Duley.
"Because of the way the baroque bow is shaped, for example, you get a colour and a rhythm in the music which comes from the way the bow works. When you play baroque music on a modern instrument, you're not usually playing to the limits of the instrument. You have to rein back a bit or the music will become very distorted. On a baroque instrument you can really push it - so you get this very exciting feeling of music on the edge."
When Duley came to Dublin to work as the organist at Christ Church cathedral, he decided that the city which had premiered Handel's Messiah in the 18th century really should have a baroque band of its own in the 20th.
He and Timoney got together with Thurston and other interested parties to stage occasional concerts with a group which they called Christ Church Baroque. "The first concert we did was a Charpentier Mass for two choirs and two orchestras," he recalls. "At that stage we were still playing modern instruments, and it was quite experimental - we were just feeling around to see what we could do."
Finding Irish musicians with the requisite experience has been a perennial problem; and one which is not likely to go away any time soon. "That's one of the problems we still have in Dublin, particularly in third-level institutions. We have very little specialist teaching in the baroque field. It's a great shame - and it's a worry for us, because there are very few young players coming up through the ranks even now."
Nevertheless they eventually did their first Messiah with a complete cast of period instruments - a real milestone. "It was a bit shaky at times, as people got used to what they were doing," Duley admits. "But it was the first baroque Messiah in Dublin for goodness knows how long, with the period instruments and a small choir - in Christ Church, which is just around the corner from where it was first performed. We really felt the hand of history on that one."
Other performances which stand out in his memory include Bach cantatas and "the first time we did a Bach Passion".
OVER THE 10 years of its existence, the orchestra has had its ups and downs. When Duley left the cathedral three years ago, the group was renamed the Irish Baroque Orchestra.
"Things move on - it's a natural process," he says. "We had a bit of a knock in 2003 when we were cut back in our funding. That took the wind out of our sails. But we've recovered, we've re-organised our management structure, and we have the full support of the Arts Council now, which has enabled us to appoint the baroque violinist Monica Huggett as an extra director.
"Her relationship with the band is just electric - and I'm sure that in years to come we'll look back and see that appointment as the next big milestone in our history."
At the moment the band has no "home" base, but Duley insists this is a positive rather than a negative aspect. "We want to be for the whole of Ireland, really. And we're discovering all these fantastic buildings - such as the church of St Nicholas of Myra in Francis Street, for instance, where we're playing our Dublin concert. It's a hidden gem. It has a wonderfully over-the-top interior which has been beautifully restored by the parish, with this incredible Pietà at the back; the perfect setting for a performance which features a triptych of Stabat Maters."
For this orchestra, as for other period orchestras, however, the biggest change of all over the past decade has been the way in which the "period approach" to music has become accepted in the wider musical world.
"You just don't get big symphony orchestras playing Bach any more," Thurston says. "Or if they do play Bach, they'll slim down the forces. So you don't get 20 first fiddles playing a Brandenburg Concerto, which you did 20 years ago. It sounded like man-eating porridge - just plodding along, instead of dancing. Nearly all baroque music is dance music; if it doesn't have your foot tapping, then the performers aren't doing their job."
Even in church? "Especially in church," he says. "People weren't so hung up on the difference between sacred and secular music in those days. Masses were written based on the number one song in the hit parade of the day - and certainly, foot-tapping was perfectly acceptable in church. Perhaps it should be now."
The Irish Baroque Orchestra and Resurgam, directed by Mark Duley, with Lynda Lee (soprano) and Owen Willetts (countertenor) perform at the Church of St Nicholas of Myra, Francis Street, Dublin, on Tue, Apr 11, and at St Nicholas's Collegiate Church, Galway, on Wed, Apr 12