Concert review

The magic of a forgotten instrument

Enchanted the audience in Götzis: Franziska Fleischanderl(Bild: Franziska Fleischanderl)

The current concert by the baroque orchestra Concerto Stella Matutina at the Kulturbühne AmBach in Götzis was an extremely charming experience.

The salterio is a musical instrument used almost worldwide and has many names. Nevertheless, the performance by salterio virtuoso Franziska Fleischanderl had a unique air about it. After all, very little baroque music with this instrument has survived and is rarely heard. The salterio, which the attractive Austrian played so wonderfully on Friday at the Kulturbühne AmBach, is the Italian, baroque version of the psaltery, which has been in use since antiquity and in the Middle Ages. It is closely related to the Alpine hammered dulcimer, the Eastern European cymbal and other forms.

Franziska Fleischanderl brought a very beautiful instrument from 1725, built in Rome, to the first subscription concert of the season, which can be heard again on Sunday (6 pm). This salterio would have determined her musical career from then on, according to the program, which was excellently written as always, and she researched the playing style and repertoire for this instrument. We learned that the salterio can be played with mallets, but also plucked with a plectrum or the fingers. And that there were several of these instruments at Antonio Vivaldi's place of work, the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice, but that no compositions have survived. They have presumably been lost.

Franziska Fleischanderl has therefore arranged Vivaldi's violin concertos for the salterio, as both instruments have a similar range. "I asked Antonio if I could do that," she joked, leading into Thomas Platzgummer's as always witty moderation.

Enchanted the audience in Götzis: Franziska Fleischanderl(Bild: Marcello Girardelli)

The audience heard a lot of music by Vivaldi, but also - one of Fleischanderl's discoveries - a sonata for salterio and basso continuo by Florido Ubaldi. Here and in other works, concertmaster David Drabek and the lutenist and baroque guitarist Thor-Harald Johnsen had wonderful solos, and the whole evening was simply enchanting. This was mainly due to the sound of the Salterio, which some visitors quite understandably described as "heavenly", but also to the skill and charisma of Franziska Fleischanderl. The Concerto Stella Matutina is always good for surprises, and this was a particularly successful one.