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February 1993

Plenty of space for emotions

Astrid Nielsch charmed with her harp at the Lutheran church

Wächtersbach. The music lover knows harps almost exclusively in the context of Symphony concerts. The harp as an instrument for more intimate music has been almost forgotten, despite its great past – partly, one must assume, because of the prohobiting dimensions of the modern instrument.

With her lively, emotional playing on the baroque harp at the Lutheran church, Astrid Nielsch gave a pledoyer for her instrument that many listeners will remember for a long while as a concert of fragile, intimate aura and impressive depth. The musican from Bremen, a student of the baroque harp after taking her degree on the modern instrument, commits herself to the calm that unites her homogenously with her instrument.

Clear structuring of the dynamics and structure-conscientous shaping of the pieces, which have mostly been taken from lute or keyboard literature, combine in a well-rounded presentation. The early Italian pieces of the first half, as the art music of their time, demand, most of all, a good technique (Cesare Negris “Dance scene for four shepherds and for nymphs” was particularly impressive). The second half, consisting of English songs, gave broad room to feeling. Astrid Nielsch, who led through the programme in a sympathetic, natural manner, played living melodic frases and chose highly appropriate tempi. Robert de Visées suite in d minor is an almost balladesque, stately courtly piece from the court of Louis XIV; the filigrane music was re-shaped with appropriate sensibility. After the somewhat wooden interpretation of Bach’s C major prelude from the “Well-Tempered Clavier”, the concert finished with a 2 minute original harp piece, the “symphony” from Handel’s oratorio “Saul” – music that can not be played on other instruments, but is especially tailored to the harp.

The same is true of the five pieces from the anonymous collection “Musicalische Rüst-Kammer, somewhat baroque-folky with their rhythmical swing. The swinging Bourre was a fitting ending after the mostly meditative character of the evening, which brought, without reservations, a truly fascinating concert.

By Ralph Ziegler, Gelnhauser Tageblatt, 4 February 1993

last updated: 20 March, 2006