Convincing performance in the Friedenskirche.
Since 2012 Eduard Matscheko and his Sinfonia Christkoenig have guaranteed top-class concerts in the Friedenskirche, Linz. Last Sunday the „Sinfonia“ orchestra fascinated a fully booked church with a varied programme, ranging from the First Viennese School to romanticism and a contemporary composer. At the beginning „Somnium“ , a symphonic movement by composer and conductor Thomas Doss, Linz, was performed. Starting from Johannes Kepler’s mystical dream story about a fictitious journey to the moon, Doss created a suspense-packed piece of music.
The concerts of the Sinfonia Christkoenig are under the patronage of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. This time this patronage meant that solo cellist Peter Somodari could be engaged as soloist in Robert Schumann’s Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra in a-Minor. This was a jackpot, as Somodari interpreted the concerto technically masterfully and with marvellous understanding of numerous facets of this work. The „Sinfonia Christkoenig“ accompanied with due chamber musical restraint. The beautiful segues between the movements are especially worth mentioning.
Of course, the acoustics of a church are not always ideal for Schumann. Many a fine nuance gets lost due to reverberation. This is also true of Mozart’s Symphony Nr 39 in Es-Major, which rounded the programme off. The exposed parts of the high strings in the first movement were not always homogeneous, the final movement lost some of the thrill in the middle part, but all in all Eduard Matscheko and his Sinfonia Christkönig presented a convincing interpretation.