Music@Menlo traces chamber music history

Part of the concert consisted of arias from odes and cantatas by the two best-known composers of the era, Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel. All of these were sung by soprano Erika Baikoff. Experienced in opera as well as concert singing – she’s played a Wagnerian Rhine-maiden – Baikoff has a rich, powerful, full-bodied voice that carried Handel’s hearty phrasing to perfection. The best item was “Let the Bright Seraphim” from Handel’s oratorio “Samson.” Baikoff’s voice was so well-rounded that listeners could not make out a word she was singing. But with such emphatic quality and quantity of sound it hardly mattered.

Most of the Bach and Handel pieces were chosen so that Baikoff would be accompanied, often in phrase by phrase imitation, by a trumpet. This was played by David Washburn with a warmth and richness that fit well with Baikoff’s voice. A full ensemble filled out the harmony and provided busy solo work for cellist Dmitri Atapine and violinist Aaron Boyd in the pieces where Washburn wasn’t playing.

For all-instrumental work, the concert offered concertos by four composers. Of course these had to include Antonio Vivaldi, who wrote more concertos than anybody else and did so for a great variety of instruments. His works here were a flute concerto in D major and a bassoon concerto in A minor. The soloists, flutist Sooyun Kim and bassoonist Peter Kolkay, had also played in some of the ensembles accompanying Baikoff’s arias. Here they had the chance to take the spotlight.

Vivaldi’s flute concerto has a generous selection of bird calls, while his bassoon concerto is full of the fast puttering for which the bassoon is well suited. But both concertos also have long lyric passages to let their instruments sing. Kim played with great precision and excellent breath control, while Kolkay was crisp and vehement.

A third solo concerto (it was called a sonata but the ensemble was identical to the concertos’) was for trumpet in D major by Giuseppe Torelli. This gave Washburn a chance to be formal and declamatory. He also got to rest during the entire slow movement, when the piece turned into a violin concerto for ensemble leader Ani Kavafian.

Kavafian also led a remarkable concerto in D major for four violins, with no accompaniment, by Georg Philipp Telemann. This was an immensely lively and busy work full of canonic imitative passages, running down through the four violins and then turning around and running up again.

The concert concluded with a piece for 10 players, a concerto grosso in D minor by Francesco Geminiani. It featured interplay between a small ensemble of soloists, here four in number, led by violinist Chad Hoopes, and a larger group that’s the ancestor of the orchestra in a modern concerto. It took the form of a set of variations on “La follia,” a popular tune of the period.

If Baikoff’s voice was the outstanding feature of the concert, the instrumentalists reached their height in the striking Telemann concerto, followed by the solo display work in the two Vivaldi concertos. But everything in this concert was delightful and charming in the way that only the best Baroque music, well played, can be.

Concertgoers who arrived early heard a prelude performance in Martin Family Hall elsewhere on campus. This featured two Opus 1 works for piano and strings in C minor: Beethoven’s Piano Trio, Op. 1 No. 3, and Erno Dohnanyi’s Piano Quintet No. 1. Both were vivid and dynamic, the Dohnanyi lighter than its Brahmsian antecedents and the Beethoven anchored by Angie Zhang’s crisp evocation of circa 1800 fortepiano style on a modern grand piano.

At press time, tickets were still available for the 20th and 21st century mainstage programs on July 30 and Aug. 5. All concerts in the main stage and Beethoven quartet cycle series are also available to be purchased for online viewing for up to a week after the live performance. Prelude concerts are free and tickets may be reserved as of 9 a.m. on the day of performance. Tickets and information are at musicatmenlo.org.