Harpsichord, strings offer fine conversation

Tuesday’s Bach Festival performance in the elegant Marie Antoinette Room of the Davenport Hotel lived up to its billing as an “intimate evening with J.S. Bach and his French colleague Rameau.”

The performance showed that there was a lot more to the lives of these baroque musicians than the church services that consumed Bach’s time and the lavish court life that was the center of Rameau’s.

The brilliant Boston-based harpsichordist Mark Kroll was joined by two splendid Spokane musicians, violinist Kelly Farris and cellist John Marshall, in music that showed what the quieter, less public sides of these men were like.

Farris, the concertmaster of the Spokane Symphony, opened the evening with Bach’s Sonata in A minor for Solo Violin.

Listening to Farris in the profoundly serious, meditative prelude that opens the sonata seemed like being allowed to see Bach sitting by a fire long after the family was in bed, thinking “night thoughts” of just how far one can take tiny musical ideas.

And the Fugue which followed showed how far Bach was willing to go in coaxing the last bit of emotional juice out of such an idea.

Farris, as always, looked like such a cool, unflappable professional. And professional he was, but his performance was filled with Bach’s passion.

Kroll showed the French side of the baroque coin in performances of works by Rameau and the unscheduled addition of pieces by Francois Couperin.

Kroll found the elegance and wit, and dare I say, the charm, of pieces with the titles “The Sighs,” “The Reaper” and (somewhat puzzling) “The Mysterious Barricades.” But he made clear, too, the intricacy of construction that went far beyond mere courtly allure into the territory of harmonic adventure and subtle musical tone painting.

John Marshall, whose admirable playing as the Spokane Symphony’s principal cellist and in chamber music performances with the Spokane String Quartet, has always left me wondering what his solo playing might be like.

Well, it’s beautiful, as he showed in Bach’s Suite in C minor for Solo Cello. Like Bach’s works for unaccompanied violin, the suites are perpetual challenges for a cellist. The C minor Suite offered Marshall the chance to show how Bach responded to the mellow cello sound in the opening prelude and the all-too-short Sarabande.

And, for contrast, he showed, too, how Bach could make the cello turn, lift and glide in the work’s fast dance movements.

When Bach added the harpsichord to the violin in the six sonatas he wrote for that combination, he brought a new turn to the form, exploiting the possibility of dialogue between the violin and the harpsichordist’s right hand, or even a three-way conversation with the keyboardist’s left hand joining in. The risk of having a visiting artist join with local performers proved no risk at all with Kroll and Farris.

They played together like old friends, as was immediately apparent from the first in the running conversation of the opening movement.

Tuesday’s concert proved the aptness of the Latin inscription on the festival’s harpsichord, a fine instrument by the Portland maker Per Walthinsen: “Music is a delight, a friend and a balm for sadness.”