For nearly three decades the San Diego Early Music Society has brought some of the greatest practitioners of period performance practice to San Diego. In recent years, they’ve faced some healthy competition from the La Jolla Music Society jumping into the early music ensemble presenting game, and with Ruben Valenzuela’s formation of a local group, the Bach Collegium. But make no mistake: an SDEMS concert is still the most reliable place to go to hear authentic performances of early music.

Sunday’s concert at Qualcomm Hall by Concerto Köln was a wonderful illustration of this. The strings players had outward-curved bows and gut strings. The cellist held his instrument between his knees instead of

Concerto Koln.

^{Courtesy photo}

resting it on the floor with a spike. Vibrato was nonexistent, and a large harpsichord supplied florid continuo realizations. The program was anchored by Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos no. 4 and 5, and it also featured a Vivaldi cello concerto, a Rococo symphony by Sammartini, and a suite by Antoine Dauvergne.

Antoine who? Don’t worry if you don’t know who he is. Hell, I’m a professional, and I never heard of him. There’s a small industry among early music specialists in unearthing forgotten composers, and Concerto Köln has earned a reputation for doing so; one critic described them as “musical truffle pigs.” Dauvergne is best remembered by historians as the composer of Les Troqueurs, a successful French comic opera in the Italian style (which was recorded over a decade ago and is now out of print), as well as for his scheming as the director of the Paris Opera to exclude Gluck from performances there. The only disc currently available which is devoted to his music is a recording by Concerto Köln of 3 of his 4 Concerts de Simphonies.

The musicians played the 4th Concert for strings and continuo. Composed in 1751, this is a transitional work between the Baroque and the Classical eras. Symphonies of that time usually had 3 movements; Dauvergne’s Concert is really a suite, but unlike earlier French suites, Dauvergne’s movement indications are almost all in Italian. There are some incipient characteristics of the Classical symphony here, though: a slow introduction to a fast first movement and a minuet (as the second movement here, not the third as in Viennese symphonies). The last movement is the most interesting one for audiences today. It’s labeled a "Chaconne," but rather than the typical short repeating bass line found in Baroque music, it’s a more extended sequence, and treated to some elaborate changes in texture and rhythm which foreshadow later variation techniques, while the wholesale return of the opening section suggests rondo form.

One evening later I don’t recall much in the way of themes from this work, but it was a pleasant enough way to begin the program, and a nice contrast to Bach’s 5th Brandenburg Concerto, which closed the first half. This was one of the fastest Fifths I’ve heard, making the harpsichord part outrageously virtuosic. Keyboard runs zipped by like hummingbirds flitting up and down. Wiebke Weidanz was the harpsichordist here (and for the rest of the concert), and her performance was breathtaking. She slowed down a bit for the lengthy first-movement cadenza, inserting generous pauses and ritards into her part. Her colleagues, violinist Markus Hoffmann, and flutist Cordula Breuer were similarly agile, although Breuer’s tone on her wooden flute was at times a little hollow, resulting in her notes being swallowed up when playing in her lower register.

The SDEMS normally operates out of St. James by the Sea, which has a hefty reverberation; scheduling the concert in Qualcomm Hall benefitted Bach’s glorious counterpoint, making it crisp and clear.

The soloists for Bach’s 4th Brandenburg Concerto on the second half of the program were Markus Hoffmann again on violin, and Cordula Breuer and Martin Sandhoff on recorders. This was another rapid Brandenburg, but the soloists were more than up to the task. The last movement is a fugue, and all of the instruments’ entries were well-marked. The recorders projected a lot better in Qualcomm Hall than Breuer’s flute did on the first half.

For me, the discovery of the evening was Vivaldi’s Cello Concerto No. 23 in D minor, RV 407. Vivaldi wrote hundreds of concertos, 27 of them for cello and orchestra, so yes—it is still possible to encounter a terrific work by a major composer with which one was unfamiliar before (as fans of Haydn symphonies or Bach cantatas know). Like most of Vivaldi’s solo concertos, the work is in 3 movements. The first movement is propelled by typically busy motor rhythms, and the last movement is in a rollicking compound meter resembling a gigue; but the heart of this concerto is the slow movement. Here, over a repeating chromatically descending bass line, the cello spins out a long, rhapsodic melody, full of lovely turns and deviations, much more reminiscent of the type of melodies Bach wrote in his slow movements which resemble improvisations over chords, as a jazz soloist might do. What makes this movement even more unusual is that the orchestra doubles the bass line, so the texture of the music is only 2 lines, one simple (the orchestra’s), the other complex (the cello’s). Werner Matzke was the soloist here, ripping the outer movements with gusto, and playing the slow movement with an apt lyricism.

A symphony by Sammartini (one of the early composers in this form) ended the program. Like the Dauvergne suite, Sammartini’s symphony had roots in the Baroque era, but his musical idiom was clearly pointing the way towards the Classical style. Also like Dauvergne, Sammartini’s music was pleasing to the ear, but challenging to recall a day later.

Concerto Köln played, as most small orchestras did back then, without a conductor, relying on the concertmaster to set the tempos and give cues when needed. Markus Hoffmann handled this duty admirably. One might quibble about the intonation at times, especially in the Dauvergne, but the overall effect of their playing alternated between invigorating and charming. Their ensemble work was precise, underlined by the splendid continuo work of cellist Matzke, bassist Jean-Michel Forest, and harpsichordist Weidanz.

Following Sammartini’s symphony, the capacity audience demanded and received 2 encores, the first the bracing final movement of a double concerto by Telemann for recorder and flute (TWV 52:e1), in which the orchestra mimicked bagpipe drones while the winds sang out a rousing peasant-like melody. Their second encore was the "Air" from Bach’s Third Orchestral Suite, better known as the “Air on a G String.”

For a copy of the program, click here and here.