If you ask a music-lover to name a typical piece of Baroque music, the response is likely to be Handel’s “Messiah,” Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons,” or perhaps J. S. Bach’s atypically hummable “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” Although these are great examples of that era, they all come from the very end of Baroque’s popular sway, not unlike the sugary pop ballads of Pat Boone before Elvis and The Beatles blew that style out of the water.

If you ask the scholar/performer Ruben Valenzuela to conjure the Baroque, he will likely propose the father of Baroque music, Claudio Monteverdi, the prolific Italian who confected Baroque conventions in opera and sacred music a century before Bach and Handel learned their do-re-mi’s. Valenzuela and his skilled Bach Collegium San Diego presented Monteverdi’s 1610 “Vespers of the Blessed Virgin” in a sparkling period instrument performance Sunday (May 23) at St. James Episcopal Church, La Jolla.

In his “Vespers of 1610” Monteverdi poured all of the fresh musical ideas from his opera “Orfeo”—the first opera in western music—into the austere polyphony of Catholic ritual. Filled with choral passages of striking chordal declamation, chortling instrumental interludes, and rapturous duets for virtuosic soloists, Monteverdi’s “Vespers of 1610” was as radical in its time as Guiseppe Verdi’s blatantly operatic “Requiem” was in the 19th century.

You might think that choral directors would be scrambling to mount this two-hour musical extravaganza, but in truth it is rarely performed. Valenzuela’s performance was indeed a first here in San Diego County. Not only does the “Vespers of 1610” require agile vocalists who understand the stylistic demands of early monody, but it also requires an orchestra filled with rare instruments: theorbos, curtals, cornetti, and sackbuts. Nor is it a viable option for the aspiring choral director to phone the local musicans’ union for a list of their avaiable theorbo and curtal players. The phone receptionist at the San Diego union headquarters would probably report such a request as an obscene phone call.

Fortunately, Valenzuela has nonpareil connections in that nebulous ether of period instrumentalists, and he assembled a first class ensemble of 14 players, neatly divided between strings and winds. For this Monteverdi challenge, Valenzuela regrouped his Bach Collegium singers, using but 15 decidedly younger voices, with 8 of that ensemble comprising the soloist cadre (or “favoriti” as Monteverdi designated them). This not only gave a more colorful sound to the Collegium, but added the necessary virtuoso muscle for the many extensive duets scattered throughout the work.

Oh yes, there was also a ten-voice male chorus to sing the Gregorian chant verses.

Valenzuela’s unwavering control of these forces, his judicious choice of tempos, his meticulous attention to period stylistic details, and his passion for the music made for an exciting and rewarding evening. From the vibrant, animated speech rhythms of the “Dixit Dominus” to the instrumental fury of “Lauda Jerusalem,” the sheer power of this music overwhelmed the senses. In the “Sonata sopra Sancta Maria,” lead sopranos Anne-Marie Dicce and Bianca Hall sent cascades of shimmering motifs from the side aisles of the nave into the full orchestral forces in the chancel, giving a tantalizing hint of how this piece might have sounded in St. Mark’s Cathedral in Venice, with its many side balconies.

Nothing could match the dazzling dialogue between the two remarkable tenor soloists, Aaron Sheehan and John Russell, who more than fulfilled the textual requirements of “Duo seraphim” (“Two seraphim were calling to one another . . .”). Standing in the pulpit and lecturn—on opposite sides of the chancel edge—their celestial volleys first overlapped with delicious, tortuous dissonances, then transmuted into florid, serpentine echoes. Sheehan’s rich, fiery timbre contrasted well with Russell’s darker, slightly baritonal quality. If this is what the music of heaven is about, I am prepared to—in the words of a treasured spiritual—“give up all my worldly ways to join that heavenly band.”

A few caveats, however: placing the Collegium at the back wall of the St. James chancel prevented their sound from freely filling the nave, where the listeners were seated. This meant they could never sing a true pianissimo , and their fortes were always muted. Over a long evening, this lack of dynamic contrast took its toll. And placing the chant choir in the adjacent chapel—with no direct sound connection to the nave—made these voices nearly inaudible. A sad waste of careful preparation—they may as well have been serenading the partons at the La Valencia Hotel several blocks up Prospect Street.

And in spite of the evident vocal skills of these choral singers, they did not know the work well enough to free their collective attention from the score. This kept the grand, concluding “Magnificat,” for example, plodding at an overly cautious pace.

Nevertheless, the Bach Collegium San Diego continues to set a laudably high standard for compelling, informed early music performance practice. Who else on the West Coast is matching their achievement and keen sense of adventure?

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