The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment was founded 21 years ago, when period instruments and historical performance practice were, as it now appears, poised to take over the musical establishment. True, the London Sinfonietta, the orchestra's antithesis, being devoted to new music and practices, had long been in existence, and remains so. And both are resident ensembles at the South Bank. But modern music struggles for attention in a way that old music seems not to have to. There proved to be a hugely enthusiastic following for the techniques of simulating something nobody has ever actually heard, and there is no doubt that the musical intelligence that has been applied to the "authenticity" question from all quarters is a genuinely, if paradoxically, rejuvenating force. Old-music ensembles tend to perform with spiky vigour, an audacious freshness that makes many an avant-garde group, never mind common-or-garden orchestras, sound stodgy and stale.
The dazzle of discovery, the specialised souping-up of performer virtuosity, are epitomised by the OAE, whose defamiliarising scrutiny has been brought to bear on repertoire from the early baroque to music (such as Elgar's) written on the threshold of the recording age, and even beyond. In fact, they are collaborating with the London Sinfonietta on a work by Heiner Goebbels, to be premiered at the QEH on Thursday. They are spreading the sweetness and light of period performance into so many corners that their approach bizarrely begins to seem the norm. Their brilliance and dedication attract the most distinguished conductors and soloists of the day.
All this was celebrated in a gala concert with the Choir of the Enlightenment at the Festival Hall, under the direction - never the baton - of five of the regular conductors. First came Purcell's St Cecilia ode, "Welcome to all the Pleasures", which Richard Egarr controlled with enormous exuberance from the harpsichord. A suite from Rameau's opera Dardanus was conducted with his inimitable mock casualness by Roger Nor-rington. Egarr and Robert Levin were the fortepianist soloists in Mozart's Concerto in E flat, these two large personalities evidently compensating with extravagance of gesture for their smallness of sound. Vladimir Jurowski conducted a spiffing account of Haydn's rare Symphony No 63 in C. But it was the gothic-romantic Wolf's Glen scene from Weber's Der Freischütz, performed under Mark Elder, with Philip Langridge as Max, that was the highlight, made totally gripping by the minute but dynamic attentiveness that is the OAE's hallmark. Perhaps one shouldn't emphasise the special instruments. This is simply a tremendous orchestra; and, as far as string instruments are concerned, the best have always been period ones. There is clearly more to the OAE project than exhumation.
Exhumation was, however, interestingly undertaken by the City of London Festival in a concert at Mansion House by the Dante Quartet and the pianist Simon Crawford-Phillips. To mark the bicentenary of Wilberforce's antislavery act, the festival is examining the career of George Polgreen Bridgetower (1780-1860), the violin-prodigy child of a Caribbean father, who may have been an escaped slave, and a Polish mother. The father was a valet at the Austro-Hungarian court of the Esterhazys; the Kappelmeisterwas Haydn, the first of the young Bridgetower's illustrious connections. He made his debut in Paris in 1789, appearing the next year at Drury Lane, and soon became a pro-tégé of the Prince of Wales. He had composition lessons with Thomas Attwood, a Mozart pupil. In Vienna in 1803, he met Beethoven, and at an extraordinary 8am (!) concert, attended by princes, he and the composer unveiled the latter's penultimate violin sonata, later known as the Kreutzer.
At this stage, it was inscribed " Sonata mulattica composta per il mulatto Brischdauer" - which reminds us that Beethoven himself is sometimes considered to have been mulatto - and it had been finished so late the previous night that there was not even time to copy the violin part of the slow movement, so Bridgetower had to sight-read the whole work. The performance was a success, but Bridgetower subsequently offended Beethoven by supposedly insulting a woman, and the sonata was rededicated to Rodolfe Kreutzer, who disliked it and never played it.
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In the glitter of Mansion House, the sonata was powerfully presented by Krysia Osostowicz and Crawford-Phillips as the centrepiece of an ingenious programme that included Haydn's last (unfinished) string quartet, a modern arrangement for piano quintet of a jolly song by Bridgetower, called Henry, and the passionately terse quartet (No 1) by Janacek that is an evocation of Tolstoy's novella The Kreutzer Sonata.
Extracts from this tragic, sordid tale were read with quite shocking intensity by John Sessions, but there seemed no reason for them to be interspersed by Stravinsky's unemotive Three Pieces for String Quartet. And, since so little of Bridgetower's music survives, it was never going to be possible to get much idea of his worth. But it was a concert to set you thinking. How odd to think of this fascinating historical footnote ending his days in a cottage in Peckham.