Christopher Greenleaf photo

This past Saturday evening, at the Cambridge Society of Friends, the perennially enterprising Sarasa Ensemble teamed up with Les Sirènes, a vocal duo, to afford a modest, appreciative audience a vivid look at “Roman Handel” — quite the popular theme of late — and at the enduring Italian light illuminating the composer’s later London œuvre.

Halfway into the first, fresh decade of the eighteenth century, young Handel, newly arrived in Rome, speedily garnered esteem of a sort the cultured natives rarely conferred on their own, let alone on a 20-year-old just down from the central German duchies. In the opulent city of Cardinal Pamphili, arts patron extraordinaire, and of the comet-like, masterful figure of Corelli, a youthful and tireless composer blessed with such extraordinary gifts could go far indeed.

Sarasa and Les Sirènes did full honor to Italianate Handel, the glorious, unifying thread. In each half, vocal chamber works for one or two sopranos, with two violins and continuo (cello and harpsichord) or continuo alone, flanked a sonata for two violins and continuo. We heard brilliant cantatas and opera excerpts from 1707-09 (Roma bellissima), 1711 (momentary Hanover), and 1735-41 (London), contrasted to great effect with one overtly Corellian, overtly Italianate, two-violin sonata, published in London in 1730, and another such, dancing structurally Italian steps draped in the Parisian hues of the day that was published in London nine years later.

Quel bel labbro, drawn from the early opera, Berenice, regina d’Egitto, HWV 38, opened the concert. Soprano roles of the era having been so gratifyingly parceled out among female and male singers of this same range, quipped soprano Kathryn Mueller — one half of Les Sirènes — that she and colleague Kristen Watson could legitimately tackle a love duet together, an uncommon pleasure. Their exquisitely matched style and phrasing, commented upon and supported by Sarasa’s supple instrumental tutti, commanded our undivided attention.

The conventional slow-fast-slow-fast movements of the Sonata in g, Op. 2, No. 2, HWV 387, brought out every device of the Italian continuo sonata, with superbly worked out, yet truly fresh-sounding ornamentation by the two violinists. In the initial Andante, the second, lower fiddle part led, an enjoyable reversal of form. Adriane Post and Beth Wenstrom shone with polish, magical tonal variety, and fleet cascades of perfectly placed notes. This “old-style” Corellian sonata, despite its nascent Handelian plumage in places, showcased Sarasa’s ability to transform the work’s prosaically straightforward continuo task into multi-hued tonal tapestry. Here commanding, there commenting, always flexibly imparting the harmonic roadmap, the continuo abounded in wonderful small dodgings-out-of-the-way to allow the violin parts to waft, unchallenged, through the night air.

A trio of diverse vocal chamber pieces concluded the first half. The latest composed work of the concert, Non di voi non vo fidarmi, Cantata XVI, HWV 189 (London, 1741), was contemporary with the composing of The Messiah. Singers and players put this cantata’s partly familiar sections across briskly and with bright relish. A September opportunity to anticipate familiar nativity duets! This work and the next recalled the easily forgotten lesson that Handel is never to be underestimated as a crafter of gorgeous, touching phrases. We may be familiar with a given aria, as in Tornami a vagheggiar, from Alcina, yet it is possible that our minds may reference (way) back to, for example, Joan Sutherland, rather than to the quicksilver and lightly textured ether of contemporary early music practice. As Kathryn Mueller, who sang Tornami, noted, Dame Joan was hardly an admirer of authentic performance. This circumstance may have planted our first impressions of this touching aria in a more sober, less polychromatic landscape. Saturday’s joyous and unaffectedly direct performance appropriately presented it as a fey creature, verging on fragile, thriving in its ensemble language rather than as a solo with deferential accompaniment. Miss Mueller and her four colleagues succeeded through simplicity and shared attention to small moments of collaborative phrasing and dynamics.  Mio bel’ tesoro, the third piece of the group, from Giustino, was another of those ripping, quick tutti duets that so delighted London’s fickle audiences, at least until Italian opera and its proponents lost favor. Saturday’s appreciative listeners applauded this vocal threesome and the glowing musicians with warmth.

As the second half kicked off, Cantata V, HWV 199, Va speme infida, showed two disdainful furies in top form sweeping all before them. Familiar solos and virtuosic duets are engaging, but the combined force and decibels of two wrathful sopranos, here pelting rapidly along in common cause and not spitting venom at one another, does get one’s attention. Sarasa tore through the busy bars and systems alongside Les Sirènes, producing a fine roar of sound, always refined and expressive even at a high rate of knots. The corruscating final section of the cantata provided a fine contrast with the evening’s other instrumental work, the [Trio] Sonata in G, Op. 5, No. 4, HWV 399. Corelli was little in evidence here, though shades of color and the spirit of the composer’s beloved Boot pervade the five movements. While the continuo of the earlier sonata strode almost stolidly along, a mere bass underpinning, the “Bc” has become less tethered here. Especially in the three quite contrasting sections of the third movement (A tempo ordinario – Allegro, non presto – Adagio), the Sarasa cello and cembalo — played with incomparable sensitivity and sureness by Timothy Merton and Charles Sherman — elevated the free, sometimes ebullient low voice to suggest a lithe, conversational counter-message to the violins’ untrammeled brilliance above. The following Passacaille, certainly as Sarasa elected to launch it forth, exuded such a cheerful French quality that, for once, we sniffed in vain for southern garlic. The breathing suppleness Sarasa brought to each of the five movements, with unaffected and graciously executed ornamentation throughout, made this sonata one of the program’s highlights.

Lascia la spina, from Berenice, regina d’Egitto, HWV 38 offered Kristen Watson the opportunity to create surging waves of powerful, straightforward passion, the familiar melody rocking atop gentle triple-meter string support. In such a calm and pause-filled soundscape, a sense of quiet motion washed through even the constant small silences. It was not difficult to conjure up the novel notion of a tranquil Roman night, two centuries before nocturnal stillness succumbed to Vespas and buses

The last work of the evening proclaimed that “constancy is a strong shield, and so is the valour of fidelity” with good licks for all the performers. As the vocal portions of the concert flowed past, Kathryn Mueller and Kristen Watson exchanged glances and smiles as they approached passages for which timing was important. An almost theatrical toss of hair and radiant grins launched them into an extremely beautifully done joint trill, one of those lovely accelerando rampings-up of energy that brought a surge of applause as the duet ended. This was a beautifully sung and played evening, further demonstration of Sarasa’s ongoing ability to do what they do very, very well.

The Friends Meeting House is a pleasurable place to drink in an evening of chamber music. Its gratifyingly neutral acoustic is supportive, with but little congestion in high vocal fortes. Nuance, dynamic expressivity, and tonal beauty come through clearly. The excellent imported halogen lamps did wonders for the otherwise under-lit room, and the ensemble’s usual exhaustive program booklet gave those so inclined plenty to read before the music began. The tail of the fine double-manual John Phillips harpsichord was angled boldly downstage, with the welcome result that even those in the left-hand seats could appreciate its reticent, refined continuo presence. This seemingly small detail is often overlooked, so it’s worth mentioning here.

Veteran recording engineer Christopher Greenleaf collaborates with chamber, early, and keyboard musicians in natural acoustic venues on both sides of the Atlantic. His principal work is recording surviving historic instruments and their successful copies in supportive, affectively engaging acoustics.

The Great Hall of the Breakers (Christopher Greenleaf photo)

The durable Newport Music Festival, now in its forty-third season, is halfway through a rich offering of some fifty-seven concerts over two-and-a-half weeks. Some of these are in settings of architectural opulence that only Newport, among North American urban places, can offer in such richness and brick-cheek-by-marble-jowl proximity. The most prodigious and grandiosely appointed of these mansions, The Breakers (designed by Richard Morris Hunt in 1895 for the  short-lived mogul Cornelius Vanderbilt, was where we came to hear Brahms on a blessedly breezy, almost cool weekend night.

In the vast building’s Great Hall, on a stage at the foot of the grand staircase, waited a Yamaha concert grand. Open doors and some of the great windows admitted welcome fresh air to an extent I had never before encountered at this festival. The sizable audience made their accustomed leisurely appearance, and the final concert of four on July16 began not long after the unusual hour of 9 p.m.

Russian-American violoncellist Sergey Antonov and Ontario-born pianist Bernadene Blaha sailed into one of Johannes Brahms’s incomparable masterpieces, his second-movement contribution to the famed “F.A.E.” Sonata in a. Robert Schumann, Brahms, and Schumann pupil Albert Dietrich composed one movement each of this violin sonata in 1853 as a gift for Joseph Joachim, for the already acclaimed violinist’s twenty-second birthday. The letters stand for “frei aber einsam,” a phrase closely associated with the circle around Schumann. It proclaims the Romantic artist’s “free but lonesome” status, if I may filch Dolly Parton’s charming idiom. As this is originally a work for violin and piano, we heard a transcription of the Scherzo in c (Allegro – Trio: Più moderato) by Antonov. So fervid and intense was the energy the duo brought to bear on this full-blooded miniature that they left little room for the listener to relax into the intricate Brahmsian cross-rhythms and usually light-footed lyrical hand-offs. The reception was enthusiastic, but I felt that the score had suffered a mauling.

The same intensity — in fact, precisely the same intensity — settled over the three  movements of the Violoncello Sonata No. 1 in e, Op. 38, composed in 1862-65.  Antonov’s exceptionally centered, beautiful, and focused sound is undeniably fetching, and his musical intentions are invariably clearly defined. He calls on the dark power of the lower reaches of his (unfortunately unnamed) instrument to splendid effect and does so with subtle variations of color and horsepower, not to mention the supreme ease with which he entices tone of from all of this lovely cello’s regions. Blaha, a secure and dynamically uninhibited player, provided both a balanced piano counterfoil to the cello part and the kind of flexible but structurally rock-solid meter that makes Brahms’s extraordinary compositional architecture vibrate and connect. She was, however, poorly served by the piano, as was the composer, about which more. A highlight of the performance was the finely judged and passionately prosecuted piercing of the cello part through urgent, full-voiced broken piano chords in the second movement, Allegretto quasi menuetto – Trio.

After the lengthy Newport pause, cellist and pianist returned for the Violoncello Sonata No. 2 in F, Op. 99 (1886), one of those magical chamber works whose palpable ties to an earlier German Romantic idiom infuse it with a warmth and sweetness more characteristic of 1860s Brahms. In the joyous first movement, the two instruments’ impassioned surgings among keys related to the work’s nominal tonality (A, f#) set the listener up — barely — for the startling F# tonality of the second movement (Adagio affetuoso). After this soundscape subsided briefly into calm f-minor regions, we heard the striking quasi-scherzo, also in f. And so back to the comparative leggerezza of the key of F in the shortish conclusion. Throughout the four movements, I vainly awaited emotive, expressive evolution of Antonov’s beautiful but unwaveringly intense projection. Blaha’s deft, tasteful playing at times verged on the loud, but it must have been challenging for her to do battle with this particular piano.

I have encountered musically satisfying concert grands by Yamaha. This particular gleaming brute, however, was no pleasure to listen to, especially in scores that require subtlety, color, variety of sound, and transparency. Its chill, colorless clangor was apparent even in pp moments. When asked, as it rather too frequently was, to produce forte dynamics, its already white-hard ugliness grew constricted and harmonically confusing. Antonov’s considerable presence and easy power managed to slice through nearly all of the painful din of the piano, but the composer’s vibrant harmonic language crumpled before the chordal onslaught. The appearance of nine-foot concert grands on stage is de rigeur today, especially for highly visible events, yet we would do well to keep in mind Brahms’s gentle insistence, in his lifetime, on slightly less imposing pianos for all of his piano scores except the two solo concerti. For the cello, the composer-sanctioned instrumental balance is magic, though this goes against the spirit of our less subtle, willfully grandiloquent age.

This, then, was an evening overflowing with intensity. For those attuned to the wide range of instrumental possibilities, it was deeply frustrating to hear three beloved scores compromised by the timbral monochromaticism and arctic din of the brutal piano. There were memorable Brahmsian moments, great sweeping collaborative arches within movements, but I have too many well-balanced, tonally magnificent performances of these two heavenly sonatas in my inner ear, on disc and live, not to have actively and ceaselessly wished that the fine, enduring Newport Music Festival had contracted for a piano capable of doing well by these scores. I would gladly hear Bernadene Blaha and Sergey Antonov play together once more, under kinder circumstances.

A final note, if I may. Compendious though the 140-plus pages of the Festival book, accomodating all fifth-seven  concert programs, there is next to no information about the works performed. Even or especially with familiar scores like those above, it is a bit puzzling not to have at least a loose sheet with modest annotations. That’s unfortunate additional work for a small, hard-pressed staff, but without the intellectual welcome extended by such notes, how do we invite those hovering on the edge of an active interest in classical music to hop firmly on board?

Veteran recording engineer Christopher Greenleaf collaborates with chamber, early, and keyboard musicians in natural acoustic venues on both sides of the Atlantic. His principal mission is recording surviving historic instruments and their successful copies in supportive, affectively engaging acoustics. He is active as a writer, translator, photographer, and acoustic consultant.

Nameplate of a source for Rodney Regier’s reproduction

Christopher Greenleaf, with Sylvia Berry, Clara Rottsolk, and Stephen Porter, are the main participants in “Schubert & the (forte)piano, the performer’s perspective.” The symposium and two concerts, a BEMF Fringe Event, will be held from 9 am to noon on Thursday morning, June 16, at First Lutheran Church, Boston. The following is excerpted from the program notes.

The piano repertoire of the 19th century performed on period originals or on their increasingly convincing replicas has long figured in early-music festivals around the world. We in the States, though, have not yet moved in this direction on a broad enough front to unleash a staying trend.

Thus Schubert & the Piano. Our concert-symposium-recital sandwich is unlikely to change our views on the matter but is among the initiatives cheerfully exploring the possibilities. Imagine a festival able to “dish up” (thank you, Percy Grainger) the Schütz Exequien, 14th-century Aquitanian lais, Homilus’s glorious little 1750s  Motetten…. and Chopin Nocturnes on a seductive 1840s Pleyel, this composer’s preferred model!

Detail from"Schubertiade" by Moritz von Schwind (1869)

Sylvia appears as a fortepianist, a specialist breed championing the questing, eagerly explorative encounter between highly gifted musicians, the very keyboard instruments that first launched the repertoire, and a public who always wind up being pleasantly blown away by the breathtaking beauty and untrammeled expressivity brought to bear on music they are quite startled to realize they didn’t know well enough at all.

To afford our argument something resembling fair-mindedness toward the dominant piano of our day — the modern concert grand, pianist Stephen Porter confronts the task of presenting Schubert credibly and with convincing effect on an “ancestor” instrument, for this concert, Rodney Regier’s “Grafendorfer” piano, modeled after Viennese originals by Conrad Graf and Ignaz Bösendorfer. Both he and Berry bring compelling musical personalities and abilities to the fray, making less for comparisons between them (certainly not my goal in getting this BEMF Fringe event off the ground) than for manifest proof of the fact that exceptional musicians make exceptional music — though so much more enjoyably on the right instruments.

To muster what a Schubert-era piano can or cannot do with the Lied, as compared with today’s less poetic, three-legged behemoths, will be demonstrated by Clara Rottsolk’s fine way with Lieder, for which the music-loving heart harbors such powerful affection.

Veteran recording engineer Christopher Greenleaf collaborates with chamber, early, and keyboard musicians in natural acoustic venues on both sides of the Atlantic. His principal mission is recording surviving historic instruments and their successful copies in supportive, affectively engaging acoustics. He is active as a writer, translator, photographer, and acoustic consultant.

Christoph Wolff and Laurenece Lesser (Christopher Greenleaf photo)

Eminent cellist Laurence Lesser’s truly august performance of all six Bach cello suites, BWV 1007-1012, this last Monday evening in March in NEC’s Jordan Hall, was a marathon. A marathon? Absolutely. To the familiar concept of Sitzfleisch we must stitch the six expressive syllables of  Durchstehungsfähigkeit, an ability to staunchly stay the course for a very good while. Lesser began shortly after 7:30, inserted moderate pauses between each grouping of two suites, and raised his bow for the last time at 10:50.

Rarely in this life does one have the opportunity to encompass all of a signal landmark in music, performed to dizzingly high standards. This past Monday offered just that. During the course of a concise, insightful late-afternoon discussion in the conservatory’s tightly packed Williams Hall, thoughtful Bach scholar Christoph Wolff, Adams University Professor at Harvard University, prepared his intent listeners to grapple with the simple fact that Bach’s six Suites à Violoncello Solo senza Basso mightily surpass our ability to take them all in at once. Confronting these lengthy, beloved, extraordinary suites avec prélude engages the score reader and listener in an intellectual marathon on a vast scale. Parsing, or trying to delve understandingly into, the transcendent changes Bach rang on ostensibly well-worn period danse forms strains our analytical powers to the very brink. Listening to these related but deeply individual works is also unforgettably satisfying in ways that make the writer settle only for words that equal “transcendent” in power and sense.

Throughout, Professor Wolff hitched wonderful mnemonics to his salient points. His straightforward comments first scanned the overall topography of Bach’s many sets of suites, illuminating them with few and clear cross references. He then quickly settled onto an overview of the cello suites, limning the whole and looking more intimately into one of them. He chronicled our frustratingly incomplete access to primary sources, a revealing look into the scholar’s options, but also into his responsibilities. We heard, for instance, how extant autographs tally — and don’t — with their contemporary copies, and how later manuscripts incorporate corruptions and mistakes but also afford researchers indispensable glimpses of vanished originals, alternate versions, fleeting clues to ornamentation, and useful vectors on mystifying harmonic indications. We today derive great joy from the cello suites, and yet Wolff emphasized the composer’s likely didactical purpose in writing them. After all, he noted, when Bach wrote them — almost surely in Cöthen/Anhalt, ca. 1720 — he had been contracted as concertmaster and head of an orchestra, through whose excellent players he enjoyed daily contact with remarkable fellow string players. Can you imagine a more exacting and thorough teacher than thirty-five-year-old Bach, a performer and composer wholly aware of his abilities, and of his own potential for — pardon my modern phrase — raising the bar? Thanks be that the Cello Suites have survived the savage, random erosion of three centuries.

In describing Lesser’s performance, I consciously wrote “august.” As his students and colleagues know, he plays with a sureness of intonation and unerring forward motion that flies in the face of the long line of decades behind him. Applying the writer’s bow-by-bow scalpel to how each of those forty-two longish movements came off is pointless here, and it would also take a very long time. I will try, then, to communicate some of what happened and how it felt, using just a few signal examples to illustrate what was, after all, an extremely rich and stimulating evening for the large number of music lovers who were there. A quartet of high-end microphones was suspended above the stage lip in an effective array, so it is to be hoped that radio listeners will soon be able to enjoy individual suites selected from this Gesamtausführung of the six.

No other instrument calls for such sheer physicality as does the violoncello. For it to project musical ideas without the distraction of visibly effortful playing, the player must own such wholeness of purpose and mastery of the considerable mechanics involved that the intended ideas appear to emerge from a unified entirety, not from a hard-working person wrapped around a large instrument. Some of my awe at witnessing so integrated a unit as Lesser and his modestly scaled 1622 fratelli Amati this Monday evening admittedly stems from my lack of exposure to players on his particular level. As well, there is the matter of coming to terms with the actual sound of this specific instrument as played by this man. The sound we heard was full and rich, but it was not so much imbued with power as it was possessed of a tremendous integration of the all-important fundamentals with their attendant, utterly critical, lower overtones. Treble overtones were there, to unambiguously define pitch and attack, and to breathe a great array of tone color into the ample space of Jordan Hall, but this instrument, as played that evening, did not broadcast brilliance or sear the air with keenness. I have seldom experienced so balanced a cello sound, whose gently dark cast projected especially rich harmonies and favored the splendid dominion of fundamentals, rather than the dazzle of exciting but affectively impotent high harmonics. We absorbed burnished, deep bronze, rather than the glister of silver. Such sound, of course, reveals rhetoric and gesture with great directness and simplicity.

Lesser’s brief annotations state that he played the suites in published order “because I feel that shows not only the growth and mastery Bach achieved as he virtually created a new medium — solo cello — but also gives a dramatic entity to the group.” Each suite avec prélude expresses related metrical and harmonic language among its seven movements. As Prof. Wolff commented in the afternoon, the suites aren’t about melody per se.

To hear the directness of Lesser’s bowed statements was, for this listener, a commanding challenge to confront the pure score, to attempt to listen with minimal awareness of the performer’s persona. Quite the gauntlet to take up, this, for Laurence Lesser has presence. All of him was at the service of the music, though. We had to be there, on a similarly high level, too.

In the course of a recital, a range of dynamics can come to mean very little if it is either constantly too great or not big enough. Lesser never failed to communicate a consistent overall sense of a given suite’s dynamics, often using much the same playing level for most of the seven movements. His deliberate, unfussy departures from each suite’s central dynamic range thus acquired meaning. They signaled something. When they inhabited one extreme of volume for a longer time, they did so in the connotation of a powerful message as to Lesser’s idea of the intensity of what he was saying. His piano passages, especially, and the occasional lightning sallies he made down to minute but entirely audible details at ultra-quiet levels, caused visible frissons among all who were listening. His rare fortes, notably in parts of the fifth suite and the concluding sixth, were that much more gripping.

The notated double stops in the six suites are architectonic columns and firm architraves, solid iterations of what is hinted at in passagework or in adjacent, fast notes. Lesser’s unerring intonation and the great care he took to distance the big technical hurdles from his straightforward projection of musical thought permitted the countless double stops to evolve as part of the language of the evening, absolutely sidestepping display and flash.

Two moments stand in memory, searingly. These are the fourth movements of suites five and six, two of Bach’s greatest and most otherworldly Sarabandes. That of Suite No. 5 in c is undeniably fantastical on the page, a skeletal esquisse of rarified, transported strangeness. It harrowingly evokes Egon Schiele’s emotional palette, two centuries on in history, rather than any feelings with which we think the European mind of the Baroque era grappled. Lesser’s great spareness of execution afforded listeners an unfiltered look into a chill, edgy affect that nonetheless radiated keen emotionality — and great, mesmerizing beauty. The febrile, tender sarabande of the Suite No. 6 in D had a similar emotional intensity, but it hugged close the shadow of a surpassing warmth, almost tearful in its power. Lesser brought a gentle fierceness to it that was moving beyond words.

Our long, special evening, punctuated by its short and desperately necessary Sitzfleisch renewal, left me drained. Neighboring listeners confessed that they, too, had drained the wells of feeling and concentration completely. We were left with the awareness of a statement made by a musician of exceptional insight about six works that mean the earth to him, and whose incomparable worth is now yet more indelible for those who were there. Decades of listening down the different cello paths walked by the disparate likes of Casals, Bijlsma, Feuermann, Casadó, and others may prepare us to listen to the cello with some understanding. Laurence Lesser’s traversal of Bach’s six Suites à Violoncello Solo senza Basso, however, required this listener’s wholesale reinvention of the scale of expressivity and — do you know this word? — Nüchternheit (soberness, roughly) possible on the cello. A lifetime experience.

May the eventual broadcasts spread understanding of how wonderful and thoroughgoing this view of the Bach cello suites was.

Veteran recording engineer Christopher Greenleaf collaborates with chamber, early, and keyboard musicians in natural acoustic venues on both sides of the Atlantic. His principal mission is recording surviving historic instruments and their successful copies in supportive, affectively engaging acoustics. He is active as a writer, translator, photographer, and acoustic consultant.

Sir Mark Elder with Lars-Vogt (Stu Rosner photo)

The Boston Symphony Orchestra often succeeds in giving us gifts we appreciate deeply only in the course of later reflection. This was very much the case with this weekend’s three-concert density. At first glance, one must wonder what’s going to pull concertgoers into an apparently unrelated sammelsurium of works, led by a conductor still largely unfamiliar on these shores. The answer can best be found in the BSO program one is handed on entering Symphony Hall, or online among the BSO’s increasingly complete and satisfying annotations, bios, and so on.

The specific evening in question was this past Thursday, January 13, when our rigorous winter was in fine, blustery form, and our streets and sidewalks were memorably uninviting. The sizable audience showed up mostly on time, which is enjoyably typical of the orchestra’s loyal, diverse live listenership. Our culture today requires more social interfacing than diving into the program book front to back, but there were still a fair number of bent heads to be observed as the folks on stage played in before they tuned.

My own experience with the concert, once asked to write it up, began with a good read online, a casual reacquaintance with the Delius (BBC Symphony/Andrew Davis), and some surfing (via research-friendly Google.de) among the early-20th-century press clippings that chronicle how three of the four pieces were originally received. A glimmer of a reason for the unusually heterodox programming came out of this reading before the evening of the concert. I think this worth sharing, naturally with the proviso that a spokesperson for orchestra or conductor may be sufficiently amused or annoyed to point out the error of my conclusions.

The four scores have in common that each of them appeared early enough in American concert life to significantly broaden, inform, and perhaps even change the way our ancestors, and therefore those whose perceptions kindled and directed our own early on, took in new music. I find this fact intriguing and challenging.

For instance, we heard two of Debussy’s twenty-four piano Préludes — “Feuilles mortes,” Livre 2 (1912-13) and “Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest”, Livre 1 (1909-10) — played first as written, by Eifel-born pianist Lars Vogt, then attacca in brand-new, sumptuous orchestrations by British composer/arranger Colin Matthews. The original scores crossed to North America immediately on publication and, given their startlingly otherworldly timbral and harmonic language, instantly posed questions whose answers powerfully define points of departure for modern music. The full, darkly luminous orchestrations were irresistible. They cannot possibly top the piano scores, of course. Their manifest perfection and star-grasping sonic vocabulary came through even via the medium of the bland, cold Hamburg Steinway D grand Mr. Vogt played. I don’t imagine that either Matthews or conductor Sir Mark Elder (Hallé Orchestra, Manchester, UK) would have attempted this lovely juxtaposition if they’d felt there was the slightest chance that the might of brass, woodwinds, and percussion would “beat up on” the piano originals. Spanking new transcriptions of this delicacy and richness are uncommon. I could not help but float a mind’s-eye sketch of the two-hand skeleton on which they are based through the great, towering structure of each orchestrated Prélude as it swept slowly through Symphony Hall. The Matthews transcriptions are magnificent new gems. They also hew closely and with audible deference to the architecture and affect of their models. I can’t wait to encounter the remaining twenty-two of them. If the piano itself was unengaging, at least the soloist’s polished pianism managed to draw from it what was needed, while sinewy small ensembles within the band entrusted with orchestral lines and harmonic commentaries always knitted themselves into impeccable, deftly unified brush strokes that truly added up to the Picture.

Turning the page to Delius, conductor and orchestra revived a work scarcely heard in Boston for a century, even though the BSO premiered it in North America in 1909. Paris: A Nocturne — The Song of a Great City (1899) did not particularly appeal to busy, businesslike Richard Strauss when the composer sent it to him for commentary, but it has enjoyed scattered popularity since its 1901 premiere by German conductor Hans Haym, the score’s dedicatee. In the big score, Delius, the perfect English expatriate, fondly remembers the Paris of his youth, a city whose youthful heart was consumed by the vibrant, frenetic Montmartre nightlife. Its newly cosmopolitan social climate (1890s) thrummed on for decades but was summarily snuffed out by the 1940 occupation. It’s a picture of what once was, back then, as we experience it now, but the old context of the great city remains clear and communicative. Elder delivered it to us with such deference to the admittedly superb overall ensemble effect that one could complain that nuance, lyricism, even finesse were left by the wayside.

A Mozart piano concerto as a defining modern work? But of course. Whether one encountered the Emperor concerto in a matinée concert or one of those sparks-flying Anton Rubinstein concerti in an evening series concert, the format of the piano concerto was so well known by the building of Symphony Hall that it may have appeared incapable of returning or revision. What a surprise, then when the Theodore Thomas Orchestra and William Mason (not Lowell or Henry, of Mason & Hamlin fame) gave the first US reading of the Concerto in C, K.467, in 1876. They presumably offered mid-Romantic Boston a flower-fresh, urbanely conversational piece that eschewed the bombast often served up in concerto repertoire of that era. Herr Vogt speedily demonstrated both his elegant tone production and an irritatingly predictable habit of pouncing on phrase endings. The smaller orchestra onstage made for fine, appropriate balances, but the chill clangor of the nine-foot solo instrument now and again obscured delicate wind band comments or important lower string detail. The overall feel was of warmth and orchestral precision, though the smaller bits were unable to assert their intimate magic. Vogt played outer movement cadenzas whose brevity, sharp wit, and harmonic freedom were refreshing.

Mr. Elder swaddled the first bars of Till Eulenspiegel’s lustige Streiche (“Merry Pranks”), Op. 29 (1895), in expansive, gentle layers of developing motives. His calm entry into the piece afforded an authentically Straussian launchpad for the ensuing high jinx and myriad of lyric episodes in the brief life of the eponymous scamp. The score’s printed title continues, “nach alter Schelmenweise in Rondeauform; für großes Orchester gesetzt” or, pretty freely, “a setting for large orchestra, in rondo form, of an old tale about a naughty lad.” Written programs for this tone poem and others of the ilk have whizzed in and out of fashion, but Michael Steinberg’s economical, informative notes give ample historical grounding for us to tack on what images and period-appropriate social commentary we wish. Yes, indeed, it does help to have these slightly firmer bits of rigging among which to clamber as the big, at times unwieldy vessel of the work makes its extremely charming way through brilliant waters teeming with brass reefs, hard-driven spray from the high woodwinds, and gentle zephyrs amongst the high and low strings. The BSO sounded simply superb, as did that ever-amazing hall.

Veteran recording engineer Christopher Greenleaf collaborates with chamber, early, and keyboard musicians in natural acoustic venues on both sides of the Atlantic. He is active as a writer, translator, photographer, and acoustic consultant.

Canto Armonico in C.P.E. Bach’s Magnificat in D (Hendrik Broekman photo)

Among the normal aspects of attending concerts in Back Bay’s busy, cherished First Lutheran Church is the generally cohesive, thematically intriguing programming by the groups and soloists who reach their appreciative publics there.

Magnificat, the Song of Mary is a title to whisk one right into the spirit of half a millennium of European music evoking the praise, sorrows, and glorification encompassed by the composers’ evocations of Marian legend. The implicit poetry in the name serves as an accurate guide to the seriousness of approach Canto Armonico Boston and their frequent conductor, Simon Carrington, bring to programming and performances. The unflagging sense of commitment the group emanates in person heightens this promise.

No more joyous and affirmative English setting of a Marian text is to be found anywhere than the extraordinarily beautiful, technically exacting Magnificat by a partially known late-15th-century figure we today are pleased to call William Cornysh. The score of his big, thirteen-minute Magnificat somehow survived into our time and has grown to be as justly famous as any of the later tour-de-force vocal works of the following century.

In two precious surviving sources chronicling the English a cappella tradition, the Eton Choirbook and the Caius Choirbook, we are afforded tantalizing glimpses of a virtuosic and incomparably sophisticated musical culture that, through casual cultural vandalism, was extinguished in nearly its entirety. We moderns need only recall the disdain with which we discard our own just-past vogues to understand the thoroughness with which most traces of choral repertoire heard during the reigns of Edwards IV & V, Richard III, and Henry VII were obliterated from cathedral and chapel. Not surprisingly, that time’s custom of recycling parchment and paper, whether by vigorous bouts of palimpsest or by the simple gluing of old pages into new tomes, probably accounts for as much of the loss as does the destruction of the tumultuous age of Henry VIII and, to a lesser extent, that of Roundhead forces a hundred years later.

Canto and Carrington gave us a rousing, dynamically vital interpretation in which the expressive character of the all-important chant between sections lent just as much to the piece’s terrific thrust as did the massed, full-throated parts. Canto’s choral tuning and intonation were a delight, as was their brilliant power in the final bars.

There followed an a cappella motet by expatriate Fleming Philippe Rogier, Sancta Maria, succurre miseris, which painted a still, deeply resigned Marian soundscape. At a young age, Rogier was recruited for the Madrid court. So talented was this singer and composer that he was appointed mæstro di cappella to the king at 25, serving in this position until his death just ten years on. Most of Rogier’s music vanished in the unimaginably disastrous Lisbon earthquake of 1755. The 18th century’s worst European earthquake smashed a still-felt broad swath through Iberian cultural documents. The complete works, or nearly, of numerous Spanish and Portuguese composers disappeared, together with whole styles of architecture and early literature. In Rogier’s case, a few tempting, representative masses and motets are left to tell us that his was an individualistic, innovative compositional voice. Simon Carrington’s evocative shaping of the motet’s subtle flow, with the choir’s obvious ease in bringing out small, telling details, lent the course of the short work – under six minutes – a special, time-suspended feel.

The premiere of a new work can, as some concert veterans dread, be the time out when one reads all the annotations or quietly updates addresses in a carefully masked cell phone. Not so in this case. First Lutheran’s young music director, Bálint Karosi, still fresh from glowing things at Oberlin and with a prestigious First at the 2009 Leipzig Bach Competition, is active as an organist, harpsichordist, and period clarinetist. He’s also been writing a string of diverse new works, from an organ concerto to solo organ repertoire and choral pieces. He, Carrington, and Canto trouped up to First Lutheran Church’s balcony to give the world premiere of his Ne timeas, Maria, for basses (chant), organ, and SSAT choir. Karosi’s program notes credit the second movement of Liszt’s Symphony to Dante’s Commedia (1855-56), titled “Purgatorio e Magnificat,” as the inspiration for his “Fear not, Maria.” Karosi audibly tips a bit of Bartók into the highly effective ostinati and quick motivic reiterations that propel the music from its gentle opening minutes into an upward arching central section — vibrant among the high voices and now and again full-throated, but not loud — that imperceptibly slides back toward somber textures, more drawn-out motifs, and, at last, through high Alellujas, toward a darkly placid resolution. The customarily slightly vague presence of voices below soprano from this particular balcony was not an issue. The organ, beautifully played by the composer, occupied a central role in introducing and elaborating upon rhythmic seeds and hinting at home tonality, as well as asserting a deft freedom from key-edness. The audience reaction was very enthusiastic, as was the performers.’ Ne timeas, Maria is moving ten-minute work, well worth revisiting.

On returning to the bench, Karosi called upon First Lutheran’s splendid Richards, Fowkes organ for the sole instrumental work of the afternoon, Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach’s Organ Sonata “senza pedale” in A, Wq 70/4 (1755). Bach fils was a praiseworthy organist — his dad said so repeatedly, after all — but his large keyboard output includes few compositions for the instrument. Seven or so solo sonatas (four without pedal parts, for a modestly gifted patron, Princess Anna-Amalia, sister to C.P.E.’s employer, Frederick the Great), organ concerti in Eb and G, and a lonely Präludium. Et voilà, c’en est tout. The spritely Allegro assai of this sonata’s opening movement is pure C.P.E. in its changeful progressions and the constant picking out of extreme intervals and quick dalliances with cantilena or cadential moments. The fast, vocal speech of the organ’s flues made for a degree of clarity and articulation that Karosi exploited fully. Through the middle Adagio, a tremulant floated beneath quiet flutes in a reduced-energy reflection of the first movement, with small, rapid-fire ornaments that had the charming effect of sprinkling tiny chipotles among songful lines. The concluding Allegro, registered just that much more fully than the beginning of the piece (though still without reeds and mixtures), wove little micro-dramas among the movement’s songful, warm passagework. This is a slight piece, and yet it was a jewel in Bálint Karosi’s expressive hands.

Simon Carrington conducting the premiere of Bálint Karosi’s Ne timeas, Maria (Hendrik Broekman photo)

The second half of this Canto Armonico Sunday afternoon was as rewarding as it was unusual. We North Americans have as little regular access to the choral and vocal music of C.P.E. Bach as we do to that of Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and the incomparable Dieterich Buxtehude. Strange, this, for Bach the Younger is very much his father’s son, even as he stretches purposefully past the transitional horizon into a dawning Classical idiom. A case of no doubt understandable neglect, but nonetheless puzzling, as Canto, the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra, and Carrington demonstrated over the forty minutes of the Magnificat in D, Wq 215 (1749). Two each of horns, oboes, and flutes joined an almost sensual quartet of continuo instruments (theorbo, 18th-century guitar, chamber organ, violone) in imparting variety, color, and stylistic zip to the small string ensemble, with vocal soli emerging from the twenty-eight-strong chorus. The grander parts were big, bold, and spankingly quick-tempoed. The solo and duet arie sprinkled among the choral sections showcased the 35-year-old composer’s effortless mastery of form, of vocal line, and of wide-ranging accompanimental textures. While I would not be among those to characterize C.P.E.’s melodic gifts as being on the level of his parent’s, or of Mendelssohn’s, his settings invariably suited the range and agility of the vocal soli, and the choral passages betrayed similar ease in marrying orchestral and voice sectional lines to fine effect. Among the soli, alto Heather Gallagher and baritone Bradford Gleim, with agile tenor Charles Blandy, distinguished themselves by the care and sweetness they brought to bear on their texts. The entirely professional continuo (Catherine Liddell, Salome Sandoval, Bálint Karosi, Mai-Lan Brœkman) were exemplary, but the upper strings of the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra now and again betrayed unequal intonation, with some puzzlingly thin tone. Simon Carrington, now active in this country for a good few years, was that unusual conducting presence, the modest member of the ensemble who, through expressive, spare gesture, commands the entire attention of the ensemble he leads. His tempi, brisk in the quick places, possessed of sure but unhurried momentum elsewhere, were absolutely right. The exciting end of the work could not have been more enjoyable. Canto Armonico always appears to have potent reserves of brilliance and verve, upping the emotional ante satisfyingly.

Not only was this concert a rare chance to hear the C.P.E. Bach Magnificat, it was a demonstration of Canto Armonico’s organizational ability to mount a logistics-rich, financially demanding program to laudable standards. Among the group’s achievements must be counted the extensive, beautifully done program, in which articles by leading figures here and in the UK said rather more about the composers and their works than even Boston audiences may be accustomed to reading.

Veteran recording engineer Christopher Greenleaf collaborates with chamber, early, and keyboard musicians in natural acoustic venues on both sides of the Atlantic. He is active as a writer, translator, photographer, and acoustic consultant.

A New Stop for FLC (BMInt Staff Photo)

The Mystery Gift with a penny for scale (BMInt Staff photo)

The Prelude will begin with a majestic Präambulum in D by 17th-c. Hamburg organist Heinrich Scheidemann, display the darker moods of Buxtehude with the solo organ version of a haunting commemorative cantata, and finish up with many sides of J.S. Bach, including two contrasting settings of his signature Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei Ehr. Should you go, you will decidedly experience a different organ than you have heard at FLC before. The three new reeds are truly something to write home about.

(The music of the Präludium and service were to have been played by celebrated Frisian organist/improviser Sietze de Vries, but the vagaries of obtaining American visas for visiting artists put an unexpected end to this plan.)

The program got under way with Stravinsky’s caustic, feisty, and quite brief Fanfare for a New Theatre (1964) for two unaccompanied trumpets. Veteran trumpeters Paul Perfetti and Bruce Hall, who would not be heard from again for over an hour, shattered the humming quiet of the full church with spare cascades of seconds and sevenths, and then yielded the spotlight to Emmanuel Music’s new president, Kate Kush. She welcomed all and introduced the organization’s new music director in a very few words — long-of-wind board speechmakers, kindly take note!

Sizable Handel choral pieces begin with overtures, the one for Alexander’s Feast being both typical and charming. We immediately had a good idea of Ryan Turner’s sure, communicative style at the helm, which made use of finely chosen tempi, sensible bowings, deft relative weighting of orchestral sections, and thoroughly enjoyable attacca bridges to project a clear sense of pace and a greater architecture. The central event, though more alluded to than specifically sketched, is conquering Alexander’s torching of “the most beautiful city in the world”, defeated Darius’s Persepolis, at the mad urging of his daughter, Thais. Vocal soli — accompagnati, in recitativo, and in arias or duos — succeeded one another, telling the classic tale of Alexander’s succumbing first to the temptress, then to her disturbed and destructive whim, and finally (this being a literary era detached from inconvenient realities) to the sweet, all-conqu’ring essence of the blessed muse, St. Cecilia. At signal thresholds, as in all such Handel works, the choir bursts forth in proclamation. What better formula could there be for enjoyment, success, and service of the original than John Dryden’s text of 1697? On his decades-long, businesslike way from Italian opera endeavors to the full-blown English oratorio, adoptive Londoner Handel suffused a breathtaking number of musical forms with his living breath of brilliant melody and deeply touching writing for strings and obligati. No finer example of the composer’s fascinating musical peregrination has persisted in concert than Alexander’s Feast. Called an ode, it is essentially an oratorio with a trim anatomy.

Ryan Turner’s supple, even liquid shaping of phrase was the most remarkable part of the evening. Superb singing by bass Dana Whiteside, soprano Kendra Colton, peripatetically busy tenor Jason McStoots, and bass Donald Wilkinson stood out as much through Mr. Turner’s molding as through these singers’ always delightful talents. Cellist Rafael Popper-Keiser is incapable of playing without fervor, spot-on intonation, and a heavenly projection of the affect his solos and occasional continuo highlights bring to the fore. He is among Boston’s distinguished instrumentalists, and for good reason. Vividly rhetorical harpsichordist Michael Beattie, sometimes audible through the familiarly muzzy Emmanuel acoustic, always brought off his continuo and obligato statements with panache and sparkle. As Donald Teeters quipped in his entertaining pre-concert lecture, Handel is prone to dotting beautiful obligato writing among his scores, requiring pairs of winds to sit for eons through the production, deliver their exquisite sunbursts in a single movement, and resubmerge. The rich horn parts and the paired trumpet writing were marvelous — and so was the playing.

Donald Teeters declared that “authentic” is a terrible word in music. He cited the almost unguided ease with which the instruments of Handel’s day balance within an ensemble, with and without voices, but he cannily dodged the small matter of Emmanuel’s four decades of success with modern instrumentation. A thrust of his illuminating, entertaining comments was that Handel’s intrinsic mastery of the score assures that the minor figurations and structures of each movement add up to a terrific vehicle for the all-important text, and that this particular ode, graciously included by most Handelians under the broader wings of the big oratorios that preceded and followed it, is a stellar example of the format.

In Ryan Turner’s debut performance for Emanuel Music, we were never left in doubt of the overarching shape and great beauty of Alexander’s Feast. His impeccable technique in leading the band and singers, and in communicating clearly with soli, came in part out of unequivocal starts for all, with brief, clear advance telegraphing of the pace and a truly refreshing communication of the intimacy of his concept of ensemble playing. Mr. Turner moves vigorously and tosses out straightforward emotional cues when the affect requires these, but the comfort of singers and players, at least in this performance, obviously came from detailed and ample rehearsal among musicians sharing a common musical language. As I mentioned earlier, Mr. Turner’s preferred attacca transitions, never edging toward the abrupt, maintain energy and focus well. This deeply enjoyable Alexander’s Feast augurs well for Boston, as it does for Emmanuel Music.

Alas, I must close in saying that Emmanuel Church’s stuffy, tired air must be original to the building, or perhaps to the time of the post-fire renovations. This historic Anglican congregation and its ecumenical colleague groups are no doubt accustomed to the unchanging fug in the sanctuary. But over the many years of Emmanuel, the Boston Early Music Festival, and other major city music events, audiences have sweltered and perspiringly endured. This is not a call for noisy, costly air conditioning, please note, but for regular, no-cost ventilation to take daily advantage of the cooler night air. It’s just outside, sealed out.

Veteran recording engineer Christopher Greenleaf collaborates with chamber, early, and keyboard musicians in natural acoustic venues on both sides of the Atlantic. He is active as a writer, translator, photographer, and acoustic consultant.

Some few years back, Suisse-Romande pianist Pierre Goy set about crafting an international setting for a spirited exchange of ideas, informed opinions, and in-depth information touching on music for and with keyboards. Each even year since 2002, his Rencontres harmoniques have conferred total immersion in the theme at hand on performers, professionals in the field, and a growing public. This being the big Chopin year of our era, M. Goy assembled an astutely chosen firmament of specialists at the International Colloquy in Lausanne from Thursday through Sunday, September 9 to 13. They shared their thoughts on the interpretation and parsing of the composer’s musical milieu and cast light from many vantage points on the instruments, original scores, living performance heritage, and original paysage sonore — the very soundscape — germane to Parisian music between the just-post-Napoleonic age and the rich dawning of the Deuxième Empire.

The site for most of this early-September gathering was the lovely and pleasingly stylish interior of Lausanne’s Conservatoire de Musique. Without the firing off of authentic performance rockets and the hoisting of banners to announce pure early-music probity, all present simply assumed, with cosmopolitan and welcome maturity, that the subject was Chopin and his contemporaries as conjecturally heard in their time, et voilà.

Grands by the three major Parisian builders of Chopin’s day. L-R: an 1842 Pape, an 1839 Pleyel, and an 1850 Erard (Christopher Greenleaf photo)

The dialing-in started from this rather sophisticated place, and so no one bothered to waste energy asserting the validity of what was, to those who came, self-evident. Modern pianos thus did not figure on stage, as their advent postdated the focal era by more than a generation. We heard the models of Pleyel and Erard grands known to have been favored by Chopin, and we had the great privilege of encountering rare and unusual music on some striking square grands — carrés — from the same makers.

The presence of celebrated modern makers who build carefully researched and musically satisfying copies of historic keyboard instruments was among the prime attractions of this Rencontre, as it has been in the four previous colloquies on the steep north shore of Lac Léman/Lake Geneva. In haring about North America and all over Europe to attend and sometimes collaborate in festivals and symposia over two and some decades, I have never yet encountered as high a standard of technical polish as we experienced from all of the many pianos we milling, critical attendees heard in Lausanne. Hats off to M. Goy for setting the standards, and heartfelt thanks to the Swiss, French, German, Czech, and American builders who swarmed around the pianos to bring them to such an unheard-of level of tuning and voicing. Hearteningly, two of the performers demanded acclaim for the staunch and semperternally anonymous tuners. This was provided, as a grinning British colleague quipped, “with bells on..

The playing in the concerts was on a uniformly high level, as was the choice of repertoire to illustrate and bring to life Chopin and his time. The opening pair of concerts, back-to-back in the Grande Salle du Conservatoire, recreated the enormously long first Chopin program in Paris, on February 25, 1832. A lovely, just-restored 1839 Pleyel held the place of honor. Perhaps in uneasy emulation of the at times notoriously under-ventilated salons of mid-19th-century Paris, the temperature and humidity were unfortunately high enough to sap already tired travelers from four continents of what energy they had left.

‘Twas a long, blessedly worthwhile evening! A Beethoven string quintet (not the official one, but a contemporary diminution of forces for the Septet, op. 20), chamber reductions of arias by Meyerbeer, Donizetti, Bellini, and Rossini, chamber versions of movements from Chopin’s e-minor concerto, Op. 11, and his Grandes variations brillantes, Op. 2, on La ci darem. Fine German Lieder pianist Sonja Lohmüller somehow managed to infuse the dreadfully clunky aria accompaniments with interest. Pierre Goy, in his one substantial presence on stage during the Rencontres, acquitted himself ably in the concerto movements. One of the eminent names of French music today, Alain Planès, held forth in an almost entirely unknown Introduction, Grande Marche et Grande Polonaise by Friedrich (or Frédéric) Kalkbrenner, with string quintet accompaniment, and the Chopin Mozart variations. Just how, you ask — at least, I hope you wonder about this — does a man whose numerous recordings stem largely from sessions with modern grands go about adjusting his technical and artistic æsthetic so as to do justice to a 171-year-old “ancestor piano”? In a word, brilliantly. Mid-19th-century instruments are responsive and timbrally multihued in ways to which we’re no longer accustomed. These pianos are capable of an astonishing dynamic range: absolutely gossamer pppp textures and a powerful but memorably clean roar when called upon to provide one. M. Planès simply assumed that all that was on tap within the 1839 Pleyel and called it forth, with especially lovely results in combination with the accompanying string instruments.

Alain Planès’ solo recital the following evening, in the other Rencontres venue, the Salle Paderewski in the nearby Casino de Montbenon, was on the same Pleyel grand. He delved into fairly unfamiliar works, as well some of the famous ones, and managed to evoke a great deal of the paysage sonore around which this colloquy was centered. A moment of sorcery, in which we were bathed in the evanescent, quiet treble of the instrument and its warm, imposing bass, enwrapped the two central Nocturnes of the evening, Op. 9, No. 2 in Eb, and Op. 27, No. 2 in Db. The celebrated “Aéoline” étude accounted for a good many sighs and murmurs, too, as M. Planès drew painterly, deft swathes of sound from an instrument that, for all its horsepower in grander passages, appeared most at home when asked to sidle off in fey, mystic directions.

Among the impressive events during Chopin et son temps was a mid-day demo-cum-recital by glowing pianist Jean-Jacques Dünki, who is on the faculty of the Musik-Akademie der Stadt Basel. He titled his program “The Three Great Parisian Piano Makers.” Arrayed on stage were a substantial 1842 grand by “the other” Parisian maker of the day, Pape, and standard, modest grands by Pleyel (the familiar 1839 instrument) and Erard (1850, verging on modern). As was the peculiar though consistent custom of the Rencontres stage set-up, all instruments were arrayed with their tails upstage, away from the audience; as you may imagine, this occasioned interesting seating gyrations by those members of the audience, myself among them, who prefer the more balanced sound of the full instrument, which one would normally hear by being right of center. The arrangement was a visual success, however, and one at least heard all three pianos in reasonably equal balance. M. Dünki entertained his largely francophone listenership with amusingly delivered period quotes and with repertoire drawn primarily from Viennese and Central German composers, always filtered through the highly distinctive Parisian pianistic soundscape. Rarely do members of an audience have the benefit of so eloquent, engaging, and informative a guide in erring down unexplored byways, in our present terms, that were once the stuff of mainstream concert life. Jean-Jacques Dünki, an irrepressible teacher and musical co-conspirator, returned to his post-concert stage in shirtsleeves to trot out further unusual and intellectually challenging scores to illustrate not only the striking differences to be discerned among the pianos, but also to quietly underscore their common French national characteristics of clarity, transparency, and finely judged note attack.

The other solo recital that, for a good many who were present, completely redefined perceptions of Chopin’s long-gone age was given by fine Munich pianist Christine Schornsheim. As did M. Dünki, Mlle. Schornsheim turned to three extravagantly different instruments to afford her program a degree of tonal and dynamic variety unheard of in conventional concerts. She drew our gaze, once again, to the message the Rencontres programs broadcast to all participants: “Ears wide open, eyes ditto. And again!” The music for this concert, played without commentary from Mlle. Schornsheim, was an arresting panoply of scores that have vanished from our modern awareness. Ferdinand Hérold (1791-1833) contributed three of six movements in his 1811 Sonata in A, Op. 3, No. 1, heard in ravishing detail on an 1801 Parisian Erard carré. On the same fragile, plangent instrument, we heard six German-influenced Caprices, Op. 2 (1816) by Alexandre Pierre Fr. Boëly (1785-1858). Moving three decades into the 19th century, and therefore firmly into the Romantic mould, was the warm, sweetly powerful voice of an 1835 Pleyel carré, the outstanding instrumental star of the evening, with an Air écossais varié in Bb (1810) by once-quite-influential Georges Onslow (1784-1853), some of whose wind music is known in North America. Unusual on many levels was the performance of the concluding work in the formal program, Boëly’s Sonata in c, Op. 1, No. 1 (1810). The 1802 Broadwood grand Mlle. Schornsheim played was tuned in a strong temperament that lent vim and character to the remoter reaches of the score (again, three of six movements in a longer work), and that also pointed out the sheer splendor of this very poetic musician’s technique at the keyboard. She is among the subtlest and most effective users of period pedal techniques you’ll find on either side of the Atlantic, and I pray fervently that her brilliantly detailed, always elegant touch will soon become familiar in American cities. Her encore, a zippy and eccentric Scherzo from another Boëly sonata, rounded out a diverting and informative evening. In best Rencontres style, a number of her colleagues whizzed backstage to a) congratulate her on a remarkable accomplishment in this program; b) call her seriously to task for interpretive choices “which I’d have gone at markedly differently, you know!”; and c) see about obtaining some of those rare scores.

*   *   *

The language at the Rencontres harmoniques is, of course, French. In the Suisse Romande, one hears “huitante” in counting, rather than the French “quatre-vingts”, which brings about the gritting of linguistically orthodox Parisian molars. One hears the full gamut of German and sprinklings of Ticino (Swiss) Italian, leavened by all the accents of the Boot. The English in the halls wanders between mild Edinburgh burrs and Oxbridge flutings to the down-home tones of us visiting Americans. The lectures — les colloques — tend to be given en français, though a few given by anglophones are in English. Questions are in any of the main languages, answers either in the same or in French. The spirit throughout is of conviviality and exploration.

A few colloque titles will give you an idea of the range of subjects explored. “Chopin, or the work in progress, from improvisation to teaching”; “Late style, last style”; “The piano works of Frédéric Kalkbrenner and his connection with Chopin”; “The English & Viennese Schools and their Instruments”; “Transmission and Tradition in the Interpretation of Chopin, 1 & 2”; “Chopin’s Pianos Once and Now”; and “Affect in Action: Hammer Design in French Romantic Pianos.” The presentations were stimulating, well attended, and lively in their at-times feisty Q&As. The Rencontres public were numerous enough to fill the concerts and keep the Conservatoire’s popular rooftop Café Mozart hopping. (I’ve never been in a European music school without a decent, heavily patronized café inside or at least within fiddle toss.) But there were always times when one could slip into the sous-sol exhibition of instruments and first editions and have the room to one’s self, or when it was possible to slide into an extended and nearly uninterrupted conversation with one of the nine keyboard instrument makers in their individual studios. Some of the makers, notably Christopher Clarke (Burgundy, FR), Paul McNulty (Czech Republic), and Gérald Cattin (Jura, FR), have a degree of presence in the US, mostly through their late-18th- and early-19th-century copies. Many attendees had looked forward to the ever-stimulating presence of noted builder Chris Maene (Ruislede, BE), but he ultimately could not come to Lausanne.

An extraordinarily effective and hard-working team supported Pierre Goy, founder and director of Rencontres harmoniques, in keeping the dense, complex schedule over four days from imploding. This is no mean feat, as both tuners and performers required extended access to around a dozen period pianos and a few modern copies outside of the demonstrations and the ten full-length concerts. The few delays were short in duration, and the universally patient attendees often expressed their appreciation for the remarkable state of tuning and voicing of so many veteran instruments of grand kilométrage. The Rencontres harmoniques will gather again in Lausanne in 2012. See what’s coming here.

For prospective travelers: Prices in Switzerland range from numbingly expensive to bold robbery, as exemplified by the price of single CDs — CHF 36. A Swiss franc is close to $1; you get the picture.

Veteran recording engineer Christopher Greenleaf collaborates with chamber, early, and keyboard musicians in natural acoustic venues on both sides of the Atlantic. He is active as a writer, translator, photographer, and acoustic consultant for music spaces.

The late Richard Shirk, his Frederick Collection audience, and the 1877 Erard “grand modèle de concert” (Christopher Greenleaf photo)

The venue for this first public encounter of interpreter and composer-era instrument will be the uncarpeted, resonant Ashburnham Community Church in the north-central Massachusetts town of the same name. Patricia and Edmund Michael Frederick are the owners and co-curators of the three dozen or so grand pianos their exceptional collection has grown to include. Back in October of 1981, they first furnished a restored historic piano for a concert and related symposium at Kenyon College in Gambier, OH. Mike Frederick poured through organological publications and sale catalogues here and overseas, slowly accruing instruments in original condition, to afford unambiguous, incontrovertible information on the exact soundscapes composers had in mind when they conceived their scores for solo, chamber, vocal, and concerted music. In 1985, 25 years ago, the Fredericks mustered the financial resources to announce a modest first season of Historical Piano Concerts in Ashburnham.

Since then, Music from the Frederick Collection, the name the series has borne on its public radio airings, has expanded to five fall and five spring concerts each year. This will be the 25th anniversary spring season. These Sunday afternoons offer chamber, vocal, and solo programs. The Fredericks present both modern pianists intrigued by the interpretational challenge of playing composer-era original instruments, and musicians whose careers regularly encompass performance on modern fortepiano copies and on the rare surviving period grands made available by museums, conservatories, and private collectors. The Collection is virtually unique among global historical piano resources in that musicians of all stripes are encouraged, not merely permitted, to try out the full range of old and new repertoire, with and without chamber and vocal colleagues, and to spend extended time at the keyboards of the two dozen or so instruments in the Piano Study Center, also in Ashburnham. With  a common-sense curatorial approach, the earliest Collection instruments are not subjected to unlimited playing, of course. A no-velvet-ropes treasure house of original instruments to play? Yes, indeed.

Keywell and pedal lyre of the 1846 Streicher grand (Vienna) to be played this Sunday (Christopher Greenleaf photo)

What instruments does one find there? They range from an anonymous Austro-German piano built from the expanded, exquisitely veneered, carcase of a Bavarian harpsichord, up through period models from Vienna, London, Paris, Leipzig, Boston, and New York. There are modern, early-20th-century instruments by Blüthner and Erard. The Frederick Collection website has information on each piano, from images and dates to keyboard compass, pitch, and other technical data. The roots of the piano as an instrument predate the oldest Ashburnham examples by a century, but surviving playable pianos by its Florentine inventor, Bartolomeo Cristofori, its first significant Northern European developer, Gottfried Silbermann, and such celebrated Viennese and German geniuses as Anton Walter, Nanette Streicher, and Joh. Andreas Stein are rare as hen’s teeth. You will have to look at them (and definitely not be permitted to touch, let alone play them) in the great art museums of Rome, Vienna, London, New York, Paris, Munich, and Nürnberg. Still, it is primarily the astonishing diversity and superb condition of the Fredericks’ selection of 19th-century pianos that continues to draw pianists and their collaborative colleagues to make the short journey to Ashburnham. There they encounter fellow musicians from around the world, similarly intrigued at the thought of rediscovering music on the actual instruments for which it was written.

Emma Tahmiziàn muses that “encountering this collection has put me in mind of succumbing yet more wholly to my native inquisitiveness.” She continues, “each piano spoke to me of a different, specific piece. Remarkable. As a pianist, I have here a precious opportunity to get in touch with the actual sonorities with which the composers dealt. This is moving, enormously so. I am in awe of what this dedicated couple are doing and feel deep gratitude toward them.”

The late Richard Shirk, winner of the 1981 Leschetizky Prize, was a special pianist who, out of considerable experience, appreciated the enormous capabilities of the modern Steinway grand. It was a good many years before he “reluctantly caved in,” as he wryly quipped, to mounting pressure from friends and colleagues to at last undertake a pèlerinage to Ashburnham. Confronted with the seductive possibility of bringing familiar scores to life on instruments exactly contemporary with those for which the great composers had conceived them, he arrived at a substantial personal epiphany. On returning to New York from his first Frederick Collection visit, Mr. Shirk called me in what was, for him, an unusual state of excitement, enthusing “I just can’t unhear what those instruments have to tell me!” Pat and Mike Frederick asked him to play on the Collection series. He did so in successive seasons, each concert being recorded for the Fredericks’ extensive archive and for NPR broadcast. In our final conversation before his death a few years ago, Shirk said that, no, these were not instruments on which he would often have the opportunity of performing. They had so changed what he expected of modern pianos, however, that he was no longer prepared to play instruments he found to be brutal, excessively loud, or incapable of a respectable range of piano dynamics. That decision, he noted, was quite a leap.

The elegant, sweeping bentside of the 1845 Pleyel (Christopher Greenleraf photo)

Other modern pianists have described the start of private artistic journeys after playing in Ashburnham. They have often been startled to find themselves reevaluating the expressive possibilities of the piano as a whole, with predictably interesting results as they adjust upward their standards for timbre production, dynamic shading, and transparency.  Out in the contemporary piano world, applying elevated expectations in the face of concert-hall reality can be sobering and, not a few pianist colleagues report, distressing. But if more practicing musicians, pianists obviously first among them, become aware of the sheer wealth of tonal variety prevalent among forerunner pianos, even among instruments that were made as recently as during the early careers of their teachers, they cannot help but learn to require greater subtlety from pianos in conservatories and concert halls, even at homes.

From Boston: Allow for outbound Sunday afternoon traffic! Drive an hour west on Rte. 2, past Fitchburg. Seven miles or so later, turn north (right) onto Rte. 140 and, after two miles, right again on Rte. 101. Six miles later, after passing through So. Ashburnham, you will reach a T with Rte. 12 in Ashburnham. Turn left and head uphill for under 1/8 mile, then either turn onto Chapel St. or, just past it, into the parking lot of the Ashburnham Community Church. The doors (upper level, in back) open at 3:30. Admission is $10; children and students are free.

See related review here.

Veteran recording engineer Christopher Greenleaf collaborates with chamber, early, and keyboard musicians in natural acoustic venues on both sides of the Atlantic. He is active as a writer, translator, photographer, and acoustic consultant.