Stunning performance by Chestnut-Hill based group

by MICHAEL CARUSO

For an amateur American history buff like myself, it’s always a pleasure to hear 17th and 18th century music played in Old Christ Church. The structure predates American independence by half a century and is contemporaneous with the very baroque style upon which Philomel, the Chestnut Hill-based baroque instruments group, lavishes its attention.

Even more important than architectural historicity, however, is acoustical suitability. Christ Church’s sanctuary offers the vibrant yet warm resonance in which baroque music was conceived and, therefore, provides the older versions of instruments with the kind of sonic support they require to make their most telling impact.

Sunday evening’s performance was the third of the weekend; the first took place in Chestnut Hill’s Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields and offered several opportunities for insightful comparisons. Guest John Mark Rozendaal was heard on both viola da gamba and cello while Philomel co-founder/co-director Elissa Berardi of Manayunk played both recorder and wooden flute.

The viola da gamba produces the more subtle, dulcet and pungent tone while the baroque cello’s timbre is more robust, tawny and resonant. Because the former has six rather than only four strings, it’s far more capable of playing doublestops with unflappable facility while the latter’s fuller body more readily projects the music’s bass line. In music by Marin Marais, Jean-Marie Leclair and Georg Philipp Telemann, Rozendaal encouraged the most beautifully decorated gamba I’ve ever seen to sing with aristocratic grace and emotional reserve. In works by Joseph Bodin de Boismortier and Leclair, his cello offered tones of burnished eloquence.

Berardi’s exquisite playing throughout the program could be heard on several levels of contrast. Prior to the 20th century, flutes were made of wood, not metals such as silver, gold or platinum. Although their weak lower registers were no match for the velvety sensuality of their modern rivals, in their middle and upper ranges they offered a far purer and more delicately expressive timbre. Berardi’s lyrical artistry was beautifully displayed in Leclair’s Trio in D major and Telemann’s Concerto Secondo in D major. On the other hand, she proved herself the reigning queen of the recorder’s appealingly pipey tones in Boismortier’s Concerto in G major.

FINAL CONCERTS

In preparation for the start of its Asian tour, the Philadelphia Orchestra performed a program that harked back to the glory days of the late Eugene Ormandy, when concert after concert was sold out and subscriptions were left in wills. Music director Christoph Eschenbach paired Tchaikovsky’ s First Piano Concerto with his Fifth Symphony, adding in superstar Lang Lang for good measure and, lo and behold, the entire set of concerts was completely sold out. Could there be a hidden meaning in all of this? Or is that meaning not so hidden, after all?

Although still in his very early 20s, the Chinese-born, Curtis Institute of Music alumnus and Philadelphia resident Lang Lang gave the concerto the finest reading I’ve ever heard in concert and perhaps even on record — and I’ve been hearing it since the late 1950s when Van Cliburn played it as part of his American tour following his victory in the 1958 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. Added to his uncanny technical virtuosity, Lang Lang invested the music with a level of artistic commitment that not only reminded me why this score remains so popular but that also assured me that there were still many overlooked treasures within its pages.

The world is well aware that Lang Lang commands the most blistering octaves imaginable. But not only are they played at blinding speed, they’re employed to project seething dynamic swells that reveal churning passions. Music buffs know the young man can excite his Steinway to roar, but he can also coax it to whisper in the most hushed tones without loss of tonal focus. All have heard him color and voice with an orchestral palette of timbres and hues, but he also can and did sing with the full contrapuntal amplitude of a finely trained choir.

MONTEVERDI VESPERS

Matthew Glandorf took a big step up the ladder of stature in the local classical music community this past weekend when he led the Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia and an assembled ensemble of period instrumentalists in an impressive rendition of Claudio Monteverdi’s Vespers in Honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary of 1610. Although the performance, like the score, was not without its weaker moments, it nonetheless achieved so many highlights of characteristic Venetian baroque splendor that it overcame the philistine sterility of its venue, the renovated Episcopal Church of the Saviour in West Philadelphia.

Monteverdi’s Vespers is one of those works composed before the starting date of the standard repertoire — which is to say, the music of Bach, Handel and Vivaldi — that has drawn to it a fairly large number of adamant devotees among choral directors who vehemently consider it an unflawed masterpiece. A masterpiece, yes — but definitely not unflawed. While its writing for full choir and instrumental ensemble is nothing short of stunning, that for solo voices lightly accompanied is tedious. Whereas the choral portions are spectacular in their dramatic arch and communication of intensely felt spiritual emotions, the solo sections make little impression and transport you nowhere.

The music is a masterful compendium of early baroque musical manners — madrigal, opera and concerto — that can easily fall apart at its weaker seams under the wrong hands. Glandorf’s were proved to be the right hands this past weekend. Could the region have found a new “choral master”?