Dolce Suono at Laurel Hill

Of the many reasons to like a piece of music, one of the best is that it makes you glad you're still alive.

For Dolce Suono's annual appearance at the "Concerts by Candlelight" series in the Laurel Hill mansion in Fairmount Park, Mimi Stillman and her collaborators chose a bouquet of eminently likable works for the odd combination of flute, cello and harp. The selections spanned the range from Bach to Rachmaninoff, but all included long, beautiful melodies for the flute and the cello.

Over all, it was an ideal program for a summer concert in an 18th-Century living room, with the evening slowly settling over the trees framed by the windows behind the musicians. The music contained enough depth to repay close attention without disturbing a relaxed summery mood.

The program was also a testament to the depth of the organization that Mimi Stillman has assembled. Most chamber groups field one musician for each slot. For the Laurel Hill program, Dolce Suono could choose from a cello roster that includes two busy performers: the Philadelphia Orchestra's assistant principal, Yumi Kendall, and the first class free-lancer, Priscilla Lee, who filled the position on this occasion.

Story-telling cello

For last year's Dolce Suono concert at Laurel Hill, Charles Abramovic provided keyboard accompaniments and harpsichord solos. This year a newer member of the Dolce Suono community, Sarah Fuller, provided the equivalent on the harp.

Fuller also arranged several of the pieces that were originally composed for other instrumental combinations. As she explained, harpists like to expand their repertoire by arranging works created for other instruments.

The program opened with the pièce de résistance in arrangements for this combination: the beautifully crafted Sonatine en Trio, arranged by the influential harpist Carlos Salzedo from a piano piece by Ravel. Salzedo arranged the Sonatine so the bowed part can be played by a viola or a cello, and Lee seized the opportunity by adding an evocative story-telling quality to the cello melodies.

The Sonatine is a hard act to follow, but the trio met the challenge with a Bach largo, arranged for flute and harp, that included long runs on the flute and proceeded along a logical Bachian route to a satisfying conclusion.

Another Black Swan

The rest of the program included sensuous tangos, an evocation of dusk by the early 20th-Century American composer Arthur Foote, and an arrangement of a Rachmaninoff song in praise of daisies.

When Fuller introduced the third item on the program— The Black Swan, by Villa-Lobos— she noted that it shares a title with a recent movie. To me, I must confess, the title is indelibly associated with a 1940s Tyrone Power pirate epic. I resolutely avoided thinking of sailing ships and rolling seascapes, even though the harp part contained a number of rippling passages.

The program's other Villa-Lobos work, The Jet Whistle, provided a modest change in mood at the end of the first half. The Jet Whistle contains its share of melodies, but its second and third movements create a less summery atmosphere. The sonorities in the second movement frequently suggest a foghorn, and the breathy climax of the third movement has been compared to a jet engine or a factory whistle.

The third movement mounts to its peak with a series of episodes. In each episode, the flute engages in a series of flourishes that build in intensity and yield to a melodious interlude without delivering the expected payoff. Stillman built toward the climax with her flute, episode by episode, like a skilled orator carefully intensifying the suspense and anticipation.

The YouTube option

In introducing The Jet Whistle, Priscilla Lee noted that she had never played the piece before, so she did what musicians do nowadays: She turned to YouTube for a performance that might give her some useful hints— and found herself watching a performance that featured Mimi Stillman's teacher, Julius Baker, and her own teacher, the late David Soyer of the Guarneri Quartet.

Stories like that may have nothing to do with the quality of the music, but they're part of the appeal that draws chamber music devotees to Laurel Hill. For those who love it most, music is the center of a community that includes performers, the friends they make at concerts, organizers like the volunteers who maintain the Laurel Hill concerts, and a line of musicians and composers that extends across centuries. The mini-cupcakes served at the post-concert reception on the veranda were pretty good, too.