Allegro opens season with intimate quartet
Allegro opened its season with a tour of Baroque Spain. Eighteenth-century Spain, as described by Angeles Aller in the pre-concert talk, was a golden age, which meant great things for art, music and literature, but lousy things for politics. Fortunately for the Friday night concert, the tour stayed away from politics and stuck with the music.
Allegro’s directors, Beverly Biggs and David Dutton, were joined by guest harpsichordist Kraig Scott and cellist Louise Butler. The intimate quartet joined forces for several numbers throughout the concert, but split off into solos, duets and trios as well.
The highlights of the evening were Scott’s solo effort on a pair of Scarlatti sonatas, the Boccherini cello sonata with Butler and Biggs, and the entire ensemble’s rendition of a sweet song by Antonio Rodriguez de Hita.
The harpsichord comes with several limitations; it doesn’t do loud and soft dynamics, and the sound only sustains as long as the string vibrates, which isn’t long. Scott made excellent use of hesitating on notes and playing with time to create musical emphasis in his rendition of the slower Scarlatti. In its quicker companion, he created a wonderful illusion of suspension, defying the quick decay inherent in the instrument. These expressions imbued a couple of old Scarlatti standards with a great deal of life.
Rodriguez de Hita was a name new to me and probably unknown among much of the musical world. The cancion (song) included on the program thus seemed a rare find, and every bit worth it to my ears. Dutton’s oboe sang in duet with Butler’s cello, with a music box sound emerging from the paired harpsichords. The gentle song didn’t seem to last nearly long enough.
Boccherini was a cello virtuoso, and his writing for the instrument presents many challenging moments for the performer. Butler exhibited assured command of her instrument, from the deeply lyric moments to the lightning quick arpeggios to the times Boccherini thought to write in the violin register. To the very top of the fingerboard, Butler’s intonation and melodic lines were confident and graceful. She gave all of the time needed in the gorgeous second movement to make it seem an operatic aria.
Antonio Soler’s Concierto III for two keyboards offered a chance to compare the pair of harpsichords on stage. Biggs’ instrument is a copy of a Flemish harpsichord, with a gentle and covered sound, and Scott was playing on his replica of an Italian instrument. His harpsichord was a bit more clear, almost punchy at times by comparison. Soler wrote these duets as teaching tools, and the minuet in particular seemed to have been written with the idea of creating a chasing game for the players. In spots, one player would only have two notes of the melody before handing the line off to the other. In addition to keeping the musicians on their toes, this back-and-forth game made for fascinating listening.
Having different-sounding harpsichords made the passing back and forth easier to follow, and when the two combined made for a rich, full sound that would have been impossible to achieve with a solo harpsichord or two like instruments.
The remainder of the concert was filled with lightweight dance ditties from the court at Madrid. The music tended toward the reserved and its formality was rather predictable, but while not musically deep or challenging, was quite pleasant for the duration. In spite of Spanish politics of the time, court life must have been quite sophisticated, and it was a pleasure to travel for a couple of hours to a different world and get a musical glimpse of the moment.