San Francisco Classical Voice

EARLY MUSIC

American Bach Soloists

7/7/06

SummerFest and the Living Is Easy

By Janos Gereben

Civilization, it's been said, is the water faucet, and culture is the pyramids. The American Bach Soloists' SummerFest encompasses both, providing the peak of culture — the best of Baroque music — but in an ever-so-civilized and pleasant Marin setting. In and around Belvedere's unique concrete-Gothic St. Stephen's Church, there is a combination of cultural peak moments and civilized summer pleasure.

The opening event, on Friday, started with an afternoon "Family Concert" of musicians introducing their instruments and demonstrating the "Baroque way of playing" inside the church, proceeded to the courtyard for the alfresco "Bach Supper" picnic, then to the adjacent community room for a "Twilight Serenade," the evening culminating in the "Main Event" concert back in narrow, tall, candle-lit St. Stephen's Church.

"Twilight Serenade" was more than a warm-up for the main concert. The Galileo Project — three young musicians dedicated to making early music more accessible — gave spirited performances to interesting short works, such as Robert Johnson's Satyr's Dance, Thomas Simpson's Male-Content, and Biagio Marini's Passacaglia. The engaging, proficient ensemble consists of violinists Amy Haltom and David Sego and cellist/viola da gamba player Heather Vorwerck.

Main Event is worthy of the name

The main concert offered some landmark performances from ABS stars in both familiar and rarely performed works. The amazing duo of Elizabeth Blumenstock and Lisa Weiss was featured in the Vivaldi Concerto for Two Violins in A Major, Op. 3, No. 8 (from L'Estro armonico), backed up by a sextet of brilliant instrumentalists, each of whom had a great solo (or two) later on. The intensity of the allegro, the gentle waves of the larghetto e spirituoso, and the majesty of the closing allegro made this a wonderful opening work.

ABS in St. Stephen's Church,
Concertmaster Blumenstock on the left

Of that sextet, violinists Carla Moore and Katherine Kyme and violist David Daniel Bowes did yeoman service throughout the evening. Steven Lehning manned the contrabass manfully, while violoncellist William Skeen and harpsichordist Corey Jamason toiled in the back, self-effacing — but not for long.

After the first of two star turns by flutist Sandra Miller (a practitioner of "helden-flute," a term to be invented just for her) in the fabulous Sonate en quatour in B minor, by Louis-Gabriel Guillemain, Skeen took center stage in virtuoso fashion, bringing down the house in Leonardo Leo's Concerto for Violoncello, Strings, and Basso Continuo in D Major. (Behind Skeen, besides Blumenstock, Kyme, Moore, Weiss, and Lehning, was Jamason playing what sounded like an "amplified harpsichord" — but quite without electronic monkey business. It was an almost startlingly grand sound, on an instrument built by Berkeley's John Phillips, maintained by Jamason throughout the evening and best demonstrated in the solo work by J.S. Bach, "Capriccio sopra la lontenanza del suo fratello dilettissimo," BWV 992.)

Another Leonardo, not of Vinci

Ah, the mysteries of early music: Who is this Leonardo Leo; how it is that an opera nut of my ilk had not heard of him, a composer of 50 operas; and why does he have his own Web site? He lived from 1694 to 1744 and was big in the musical life of Naples. The concerto played so brilliantly by Skeen & Co. is a delight, ranging from Purcellian majesty to varied, imaginative, eminently "modern" passages.

As we come to more familiar shores, there is yet another mystery awaiting the musical traveler. C.P.E. Bach's Quartet (remember the word, kind reader) for Flute, Viola, and Harpsichord in G Major, Wq 95, was performed by Miller (flute), Bowes (viola), and Jamason (harpsichord, in a jaw-dropping bravura performance) — but something was missing. Quartet? Three instruments? If you look up the work, there is a fourth instrument, in fact: a cello. So instead of the call going forth, "Is there a cellist in the house?" ABS presented it as a trio, with a program claiming that it's a "quartet for three instruments," and is "so-named since the two hands of the harpsichordist play two individual voices."

Honestly now. Christopher Hogwood can play "two individual voices" as well as anyone, and yet he has performed and recorded this work (on the fortepiano) with Nicholas McGegan (flute), Catherine Mackintosh (viola), and Anthony Pleeth (cello) — as a proper quartet. But let me repeat that Jamason's performance was so powerful, ABS could probably do away with other instruments as well.

Blumenstock, Weiss, Kyme, Bowes, Skeen, Jamason, and Lehning went into overtime with Carlo Farina's Capriccio stravagante and Johann Heinrich Schmelzer's Die Fechtschule, completing an extensive, generous, varied program on this sunshine-to-moonlight SummerFest celebration of early music. Another SummerFest program is due July 11-13 in San Francisco's Grace Cathedral, and July 14-16 in Davis' Mondavi Center.