France and Italy coalesce at concert

Allegro – Spokane’s early music series – presented an evening of “Baroque Battles at the Bing” in its opening concert Friday, turning the spotlight first on music from Italy then from France. What seemed to musicians of the time as a serious conflict of styles struck most of Friday’s audience as two side of the same coin.

The Italians were enamored of their recent invention – opera. But the French were more interested in the dance. Allegro co-director David Dutton quoted the French theorist Mersenne that the contrast was between the Italians’ “extraordinary passion” and the French’s “continuous sweetness.” What struck me was the Italian love for vocalism even in instrumental music and the French preference for elegance, even to the point of being prissy.

Dutton and fellow oboist Keith Thomas, along with harpsichordist Beverly Biggs and cellist Louise Butler, opened with Antonio Vivaldi’s short Trio Sonata in G minor. The interplay between the two oboe parts sounded like a duet from an opera or cantata. Dutton and Thomas ornamented the slow movement like competing sopranos.

The first of two “confrontations” followed with Dutton and violinist Rachel Dorfman trading off movements of sonatas by Pierre Danican Philador for oboe and one by Archangelo Corelli for violin. Both had accompaniment by Biggs’ harpsichord, but Dutton was backed by Stephen Swanson playing the viola da gamba and Dorfman by Butler playing cello.

The timbre of the two bass instruments was revealing. The cello had a more resonant warmth of sound, while the gamba had a cooler, more focused tone.

In the two “battling” sonatas and in the French and Italian set of variations on “La folia” by Marin Marais and Vivaldi following intermission, the Italian music seemed more muscular and the French more fastidious. Heaven forbid using the dreaded terms “masculine” and “feminine,” but it is tempting.

The beautiful Marais variations were performed by Dutton, with Swanson and Biggs accompanying. It seemed ironic the music sounded so awkward on the oboe and would have sounded graceful on Marais’ own instrument, the gamba.

The Vivaldi set was played in good operatic style by Dorfman and violinist Chari Bickford, with Biggs and Butler accompanying.

Each half of Friday’s program ended with a French dance performed with a full complement of instrumentalists and dancers from the Theater Ballet of Spokane performing choreography by the school’s artistic director, Dodie Askegard. The dancers were graceful and disciplined, and Askegard’s dances suited the music of Jean-Baptiste Lully and Francois Couperin.

The instrumental accompaniment to the dance could have used a bit more attention to the niceties of intonation and ensemble and more contrasts of loud and soft. Ten dances can come to sound tedious when played at a uniform level, no matter how skilled the dancers might be.

Allegro’s programs always present an intriguing artistic viewpoint even when the performances do not meet the fastidious standards Lully is reported to have achieved.