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MUSIC
Merritt, shown in Texas, kept her voice down at the Birchmere, but not enough of the time.
(By Sasha Haagensen -- Getty Images For Directv)
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Bach Sinfonia
While Vivaldi, Corelli and their compatriots were reveling in their Italianness and Rameau and Lully in their Frenchness, the baroque composers of Northern Europe tended to be musical chameleons, writing fluently in either Italian or French idioms as the fashion of the moment dictated. Thus Georg Philipp Telemann, German and Lutheran to the core, turned out reams of concertos, cantatas and suites, all filled with the forms, inflections, ornaments and rhythmic formulas native to his contemporaries to the south.
The Bach Sinfonia chose three splendid examples of Telemann's art for its program Saturday at the Woodside United Methodist Church in Silver Spring. There was a quartet (played here by two flutes, bassoon and a cello-and-harpsichord continuo) that had both the grace and the modest range of the French musical language; an Italianate concerto for three violins, laced with energy and exuberant ornamentation; and, in the second half, his 10-movement French-inspired, "Wassermusik" Suite, or "Water Music, Hamburg Ebb and Flow."
Conductor Daniel Abraham has gathered together 19 baroque experts for this ensemble. They play on period instruments (or their copies) with gut strings and bows that provide more clarity than power or bite. Even when this group motors along enthusiastically, its music projects warmth and a sense of intimacy. In this performance, however, it also projected moments of raggedness. Since, in true baroque fashion, the upper strings and winds played standing and -- on this stage -- bunched up, the shorter violinists in back could not possibly have seen much of the seated cellists or of anyone else's body language, which, for this chamber-size group, might account for some of the lapses in ensemble.
The concert opened majestically with the big Sinfonia from Bach's Cantata No. 42.
-- Joan Reinthaler
