The Old Post Road brings back French Baroque

The setting was intimate in Houghton Chapel on Saturday night as the five musicians of the chamber music group, Musicians of the Old Post Road, ended their 21st season with "Conversation Galantes: Music of the French Baroque." They sat in a small grouping close to the audience. This group contained Daniel Ryan on the cello, Wellesley's own Suzanne Stumpf on the traverso (a precursor to the modern flute), Sarah Darling on the violin, guest artist and Wellesley professor Laura Jeppesen on the viola de gamba, and Michael Bahmann on the harpsichord.

The concert opened with "Sonate en quartour op. 12, no. 6" by Louis-Gabriel Guillemain, which concert-goer Ivan Freed of Bolton called his favorite because of the "good interplay between the instruments. It had a very pleasing sound." There were three movements of the sonate. The viola and flute moved together, while the cello sang slow notes below the quick runs of the other instruments. The final movement, the allegro, was lighter on its feet than the first two, with fewer pauses between musical phrases. It had a rich, resonating sound, and Jeppeson played the viola with energy and fervor.

The next piece, Troisième concert from "Pièces de clavecin en concerts" by Jean-Philippe Rameau, was unusual because as Stumpf explained after the concert, the harpsichord was the star of the piece. During the 18th century, when the piece was composed, the harpsichord was the accompaniment, not the "solo instrument," she said. In most of the pieces played during the concert, the harpsichord part was improvised, as composers of the time only gave the bass line in the sheet music, leaving the right hand free to improvise. Thus the ornaments and embellishments change each time the piece is performed.

For the next piece, the musicians were joined by baritone Aarone Engebreth, who sang "Les Femmes," by André Campra. "Les Femmes" is about a man who is tired of dealing with romantic games, so he seeks to escape to the forest and live in peace without women. Engebreth's rich vibrato filled the chapel, but at points it was hard to follow him, as he swallowed some of the words at the ends of the phrases. Nonetheless, fellow concert-goer Shirley Freed liked him best. "I did like his expressiveness,"
she said.

After an intermission, the concert concluded with "Sonata in D Major for traverso and continuo, op. 2 no. 5" by Michel Blavet and the "Paris Quartet no. 6 in E Minor" by Georg Philipp Telemann. During the Blavet, the traverso floated piercingly above the slower cello and harpsichord. The Telemann was a rousing end to the concert. All the musicians returned to play this lively piece, with fantastic movement from the violin as the cellist played a chord progression similar to that of Pachelbel's "Canon in D."

At the end of the concert, as he packed up the harpsichord to take home, Bahmann commented on the difference between musical culture now and during the 18th century. "Back then, when people wanted to have music, they needed to make it themselves, so most people played instruments," he said. In barbershops of the time, they often had viola de gambas for waiting customers to play. When asked if he would rather have lived in that time, he said no because, "Now, we live like kings." With that, he rolled his harpsichord away.