If Music Be The Food Of Love

MICHAEL DRAKE

King of Hearts, Norwich (Norfolk and Norwich Festival)

If Music Be the Food of Love, Play on of course. And on Saturday evening, in this most intimate of venues, soprano Anna Crookes, violinist Clare Salaman and Terry Charleston (harpsichord) might well have done for continued enjoyment of the rapt audience had it not been for supper whetting other appetites.

As it was the trio of skilful instrumentalists provided a feast of baroque treats of which Purcell's title song and the following painfully sad “The Plaint” were but two.

Bernardo Pasquini, a harpsichordist himself, gave the soloist the chance to display masterly technique in the “Cuckoo Song”, whilst the violinist encapsulated all the evening's moods in the four contrasting sections of Vivaldi's Sonata in A minor.

Finally, Three German Airs by Handel were really songs to the love of beauty itself sung and played by all three artists with colourful joy.

Ideally more resonance would have enhanced the overall performance but this delightful concert was about love not war.