EUBO: St John the Evangelist (From The Oxford Times)

EUBO: St John the Evangelist

2:34pm Friday 30th December 2011 in Music By Giles Woodforde

It’s quite a surprise to discover any European Union institution that’s not quaking in its financial boots. Yet the European Union Baroque Orchestra (EUBO) is able to go on comparatively undisturbed. “We’ve managed to stay above a lot of the problems in Europe because we have quite a small budget, relatively speaking,” EUBO director general Paul James told me in an Oxford Times interview.

Founded in Oxford 26 years ago and now touring across Europe, EUBO doesn’t often get a chance to come home. But the lure of a new performance space was obviously impossible to resist.

St John the Evangelist, opposite the Iffley Road University sports ground, has been given a bright, cheerful refurbishment by the nearby St Stephen’s House, with comfortable seats replacing hard pews.

EUBO is a training orchestra: each year a fresh group of musicians is selected. The present players showed an immaculate sense of style and fluid phrasing as they worked through no fewer than seven baroque composers under the direction of Alexis Kossenko. Locatelli’s Christmas Concerto, Op 1 No 8, displayed a sense of awe rather than outright celebration, while Sammartini’s Concerto in F (with Kossenko as recorder soloist) was light and lilting. Graupner’s Overture in E was a very jolly miniature, and Pisendel’s Sonata in C minor was whipped into a considerable frenzy. Geminiani’s Concerto Grosso in D minor produced stylised rhythms dancing above a delicate pizzicato accompaniment.

But if any of these composers ever came across the music of their contemporaries Bach and Telemann, they could be forgiven for throwing their wigs to the ground in despair. EUBO demonstrated that these two composers were simply in a different class as they played Telemann’s Concerto for flute (Kossenko), violin (Zefira Valova) and strings, and Bach’s Suite No 2 — here given a rather idiosyncratic interpretation with Kossenko’s flute solos reticent at first, then blossoming forth with exuberant ornamentation.