New spark in old standbys

By Grant Menzies for The Register-Guard.

Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major and his Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins and Orchestra; Tomaso Albinoni's Oboe Concerto in D Minor, and Johann Baptist Neruda's Concerto in E-flat for Corno da Caccia and Orchestra - these works, featured on Sunday afternoon's Oregon Bach Festival program at Silva Concert Hall, could have come straight off the jewel box of one of those "Best of the Baroque" CDs, bargain-priced for the pocketbook of Everyman (or woman).

Indeed, three-quarters of the pieces performed are well known and often heard; almost predictably, at the finish of each they received a full-blown standing ovation, much the way people seeking a little insta-knowledge of music hurry to buy those "greatest of" recordings alluded to above, with their contents reassuringly recommended by herd opinion.

But the performances of these old standbys by the Bach Festival Orchestra and four fine soloists went far toward proving a point of utmost importance for a festival celebrating the music of a composer who died in 1750: that the music's enduring life, despite the occasional overdose of hyper-popularity, continues to pulse through every note and phrase, demonstrating that far from being fit only for a museum, this is music most thinking people would agree is well equipped to appeal to the human and the now.

When performed by musicians of such refinement of technique and largeness of soul as the ensemble we heard Sunday, Bach's oeuvre, especially, responds to and inspires all that is eternal and most worthy in the human spirit - issues that no doubt will be raised in art music's able defense in Robert Levin's Discovery Series lecture on Thursday, "Who cares if classical music dies?"

Violinists Kathleen Lenski and Elizabeth Baker (the former being one-quarter of the esteemed Angeles String Quartet, the latter a member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic) gave a spirited and shapely reading of Bach's Concerto for Two Violins, playing off each other's signature sounds - Lenski's crisp, dramatic tone, Baker's coolly sedate phrasing - and sometimes trading each other's violinistic voices for the heck of it.

Master oboist Ingo Goritzki exploited his handsome, rounded tone in the Albinoni concerto, showing that a performer can be stylish and profound at the same time. The Festival Orchestra put enormous energy into Bach's third Orchestral Suite, which, with a placidly shimmering "Air on the G String," gave the surrounding outer movements all the riotous richness and flair of Baroque architecture.

The program's stars were the mystery composer Neruda (we know he died in Dresden in 1780 - and that's about all, folks) and trumpet virtuoso Guy Few, playing the Baroque brass instrument known as the corno da caccia, Italian for "hunting horn."

The corno da caccia was known to Bach as the "French horn," and is often specified by him in parts calling for similar virtuosic powers as those required of the trumpet. Although Neruda's sweetly elegant work is often called a trumpet concerto, he definitely composed it for the valveless corno da caccia, in the clarino (high) register, which calls for various techniques (such as "hand-stopping") to achieve registers that would normally be produced by the valves developed by a later age.

As such, no natural horn, let alone this one, is easy to play, though don't tell that to Few - if anyone can make the corno da caccia sound easy to conquer, not to mention downright sexy, it's Few (who in his black leather jacket and boots looked pretty sexy himself). That he did, and then some. Besides tossing off his part's complexities, Few easily maintained the silky, lyrical legato that infuses all his performances, at the same time making the horn's muffled timbre sing - particularly in the Vivace third movement - with lots of bright golden tone.

Grant Menzies is classical music critic for Willamette Week in Portland.