Review: Mannheim Rocket

Richard Spece conducting
with Marshall University Fife & Drum Corps
March 13, Monumental Church

Mannheim Rocket, Richmond’s new period-instruments orchestra, launched itself with several flourishes in one of the few public spaces in this country whose age matches the vintage of classical-period music and the instruments on which it was first heard.

Performing in Monumental Church, designed by the pioneering American architect Robert Mills and completed in 1814, the 24-piece orchestra of gut-strung fiddles, narrow-bore woodwinds, valveless “natural” horns and trumpets and kidskin-headed timpani delivered a highly assertive reading of Beethoven’s First Symphony, vividly showcasing the very different sonorities and tone colors of pre-modern orchestral instruments.

Curious thing about these early instruments: Their tone is thinner, more dry and less refined or “rounded” in sound than their modern descendants; but collectively they often seem to project more strongly, even aggressively. Some of the difference can be attributed to playing technique, especially stronger accenting; greater clarity and speed in quick figurations also boosts the energy level.

Slashing accents, hard drumbeats, more prominently audible wind and brass parts and high contrasts between loud and soft playing drove Mannheim Rocket’s Beethoven First. The piece, which when played by a modern orchestra tends to sound like a rambunctious cousin of Haydn and Mozart, here sounded like a pre-echo of the more grandly scaled, expressively epic symphonies that Beethoven would produce a few years later.

The ensemble’s performance of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550, had a similar in-your-face presence and intensity, although indelicacies of tone production, balance and ensemble were more audible.

I sat in different parts of the church for the two symphonies, closer to the orchestra for the Mozart; so the differences I heard in performances of the two works were probably as much due to the acoustical peculiarities of this octagonal, domed, highly resonant space as to the different demands made on musicians by the two composers and how these musicians met those demands.

The string sections of the ensemble were minimal by modern standards – three each of first and second violins, two each of violas and cellos, one double-bass; but they maintained balance with winds in even the loudest passages, and carried tunes with more lyricism and warmth than might have been expected.

Mannheim Rocket’s conductor, Richard Spece, a clarinetist whose has played in period-instruments ensembles for two decades, showed a firm grasp of the music at hand and the capacities of the instruments in his band. His choices of when and when not to take repeats at times seemed unusual – the finale of the Mozart, for example, was about as long as the first movement; but repeats when taken were expressively differentiated enough to warrant the repetitions.

The symphonies were preceded by a set of early American, British and French marches and popular tunes, played by the Marshall University Fife & Drum Corps. Performing in Colonial-period uniforms, the ensemble produced an exhilarating sound that was room-filling and then some, nearing but not crossing the line to the deafening.

The corps’ director, Wendell Dobbs, credited by Spece as a prime instigator in the organization of Mannheim Rocket, traded fife for flute to play in the orchestra.