Dolce Suono: Music of Spirit, Longing, and Passion

The best example of that overall mood was the Haydn trio for piano, violin, and cello in the first half. Haydn is pianist Charles Abramovic’s favorite composer, and he communicated his enthusiasm with a performance that included a healthy dose of the bourbon-and-barbecue exuberance he brought to the Jelly Roll Morton ragtime the Dolce Suono gang presented at their October concert. He didn’t try to turn Haydn into ragtime, but he clearly understood he was playing music that reaches its peak when it receives the same kind of loose, high-spirited approach.

Haydn composed the trio in an era when composers thought of the strings as accompanists for the piano, but he included demanding interludes for the violin and the cello. Violinist Yiying Julia Li and cellist Yumi Kendall produced strong, string-whipping moments when required. Li’s contributions included a particularly beautiful violin solo, mostly in the alto range. She’s one of the newest — and youngest — members of the Dolce Suono roster, but moments like that proved she’s another example of Mimi Stillman’s ability to attract first-class musicians.

Adverbial variations

The Vivaldi that closed the program produced the same happy atmosphere. Vivaldi’s “La Folia” is a set of variations composed for trio sonata — flute, violin, and the standard Baroque accompaniment of harpsichord and cello. It’s one of those variation pieces that reminds me of the famous speech in which Cyrano de Bergerac improvises the insults the Vicomte de Valvert could have applied to his nose if the Vicomte possessed Cyrano’s wit. Cyrano ticks off possibilities like imaginatively, pedantically, kindly. Vivaldi didn’t include a narration with his variations on a famous tune, but you can hear him saying, “Now watch how I do it rollingly...frantically...swayingly over a plucked cello....”

At Dolce Suono’s last concert, I was impressed by the way mezzo-soprano Misoon Ghim handled the all-important ornaments singers are supposed to add, as they see fit, to Baroque vocal lines. At this concert, in addition, she communicated some subtle emotions. In the Bach aria “I shall honor you my whole life long, O God,” she added the right touch of majesty to the elation of the music while Mimi Stillman supported her with a bright flute obbligato. In Bach’s “Delightful rest, beloved pleasure of the soul,” you could feel the serenity of a spirit secured by a calm devotion to virtue.

Two of the other arias on the program were less sanguine. The third Bach aria was a plea for divine mercy, and Handel’s “Ho tanti affanni in petto” laments the painful aspects of romantic love. The first piece on the program, Gottfried Stölzel’s “Bist du bei mir” recognizes the reality of death, but it’s primarily a hymn to lifelong love. Dolce Suono’s arrangement surrounded Ghim’s full mezzo with a blend created by the counterpoint of flute and violin, the darker tones of the cello, and the gentle ripple of the harpsichord. It opened the afternoon with all five musicians playing one of the best-loved pieces in the Baroque repertoire and set the tone for everything that followed.