Musica Viva Tasmania opened its 2019 season in Hobart with a concert of early Baroque music performed by Van Diemen’s Band. The intimate and ornate beauty of the Hobart Town Hall was a perfect venue for a concert that Julia Fredersdorff described as a re-creation of the Abendmusik (evening music) concerts of the 17th and 18th centuries. Bach is reputed to have walked more than 400km to hear these concerts, and on the evidence of Thursday evening I can see why.

Julia Fredersdorff and Thomas Flint

Taken as a whole, the concert was a sort of extended crescendo. Beginning with the quiet, gentle reflectiveness of Becker’s Paduan, the music slowly grew in intensity until the explosion of fireworks in the extraordinary Sonata Jucunda in D (attributed to Biber or Schmelzer). As the intensity grew, so did the polish of the performances. Bass-baritone Thomas Flint brought a profound solemnity and a feeling of real religious devotion to the 17th century sacred works that comprised most of the programme. His voice has a quality, hard to define in mere words, that seems to emanate directly from the soul.

In her program notes, Fredersdorff mentions the wide...