Baroque Players Offer Mix of Styles
By D.S. Crafts For the Journal
Just what dance craze would attract a fashionable European circa 1700? A sexily sultry saltarello? Perhaps a craven ciaccona might raise some disapproving eyebrows. It was often a fight between French and Italian styles that captured attention, but all forms seemed to find their way into concert music.
The Albuquerque Baroque Players offered a full dance card of the popular preclassical styles in “Invitation to the Dance,” the opening program of their 11th season, Sunday at the Historic Old San Ysidro Church in Corrales.
A sonata entitled “La Magnifique” by the French composer Louis- Nicolas Clerambault used all four of the players with MaryAnn Shore beginning on the pungent sound of the oboe, then switching to the sweeter tone of the recorder.
As harpsichordist Susan Patrick said, the music of Frescobaldi is rarely heard in concert, despite his being a most important composer of strictly instrumental music when instrumental forms were just beginning to match the depth and complexity with vocal music. His “Cento partite sopra passacaglia” for solo harpsichord was written before the graphic representation of music had congealed into its current form. There are no time signatures, nor even keys as such in the manuscript. Patrick confessed that she has been struggling to interpret the piece for several decades. She has succeeded convincingly. Launching into this 10-minute work of exceptional virtuosity, she gave the piece the sound of raw emotion conveyed through a thrillingly nearchaotic use of form.
The Suite in e minor by Hotteterre is nicknamed “Le Roman” though as Shore remarked, it is thoroughly French in character. She referred to the many ornamentations as “wiggles.” Ah, but it is in those wiggles that a performer can really strut her stuff. Just as Hotteterre himself was a renowned virtuoso, so is Shore, performing intricate passages on an instrument, the baroque oboe, by no means easy to control.
A sonata from Corelli’s Opus 5 brought violinist Linda Vik to the stage choosing to perform its accompaniment with viola da gamba (Mary Bruesch) rather than harpsichord. The interplay of the two lines was felt throughout, the players paralleling each other through a jaunty Allemanda and ultimately into a rollicking Giga (Jig).
The Telemann sonata in e from his Essercizii musici (Musical exercises) brought Bruesch back to the stage deftly demonstrating just how useful the viola da gamba could be. The forerunner of the modern cello, the gamba was used primarily as a bass instrument for the other works on the concert but here became soloist singing in its rich baritone string voice. The final movement, Vivace, turns out to be a kind of Gypsy Dance full of ethnic rhythms.
Several works by Uccellini brought the entire ensemble back together. The Aria sopra Bergamasca became a tour de force for recorder and violin as evermore intricate and rapid variations spun out over a repeating three-chord foundation.
Albuquerque Baroque Players can be heard again on Nov. 15-16, Jan. 17-18 and March 28-29. And don’t forget the exceptional cookies at intermission.
(c) 2008 Albuquerque Journal. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.