Dolce Suono's "Debussy and The Baroque'

The third installment in Dolce Suono's season-long celebration of Claude Debussy's 150th birthday examined Debussy's relationship with the Baroque.

That connection may seem odd, since it links a composer who thrived during the years before World War I with composers who ornamented Versailles during the reigns of Louis XIV and XV. But it makes sense when you remember that the French Baroque composers are just as important as their Italian and German contemporaries. Rameau and Couperin belong to Debussy's national tradition; Debussy championed Rameau's work and urged French composers to study it.

The juxtaposition makes even more sense when you note that the period instrument revival began in the last years of the 19th Century. The French Society of Ancient Instruments played its first concert in 1901, 17 years before Debussy's death. Debussy would have incorporated the early music movement into his musical worldview in the same way he absorbed the influence of jazz and Asian art forms.

The thread that connects Debussy with the French Baroque is a perennial French interest in tone, color and the sonorities created by different combinations of instruments. Debussy's last trio, the Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp, exploited the possibilities of a novel, highly original combination. It was the second entry in a cycle that would have explored six instrumental combinations, had Debussy lived to finish it.

Early music star

Dolce Suono's program placed that final masterpiece at the end of an afternoon that teamed works by Couperin and Rameau with contemporary works by Stephen Stucky and the harpsichordist Anthony Newman, one of the stars of the early music scene. The program opened with Newman's fingers creating a happy jangle, introducing a Rameau trio featuring flutist Mimi Stillman and guest cellist Nathan Vickery.

An early music specialist might have handled some of the flute passages in the Baroque pieces somewhat differently, but that's a quibble from someone who attends a lot of early music concerts. The sheer quality of the music making and the verve the musicians brought to their work overwhelmed any reservations raised by my devotion to the early music movement.

Stillman once again demonstrated a flair for well-timed shifts from flute to piccolo. The two movements in which she took up the higher instrument produced several minutes of rousing joy.

Jet-age harpsichord

Both contemporary pieces on the program extended Debussy's link with the Baroque into the present. Newman's short Gigue for Harpsichord takes a standard Baroque form and accelerates it to finger-challenging jet-age speed.

Stucky's piece is a trio for oboe, horn and harpsichord, but Stucky didn't choose that instrumentation himself. He wrote the trio for a project that commissioned new works for the combinations that Debussy planned to include in the series cut short by his death.

Had Debussy written the piece he hoped to compose, I'm certain it would still be the top piece for this combination, in the same way his Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp remains the top piece for that instrumentation. But Stuckey's trio would be a major contender for second place.

Director's perk

The wind parts were played by two guests from the Philadelphia Orchestra, oboist Jonathan Blumenfeld and horn player Shelley Showers. They brought out the special personalities of their instruments, as the piece requires, through four movements that include night music, a military march for the oboe, and evocative heraldic interludes for the horn that are intensified by the harpsichord. The climax is the kind of bravura final drive that leaves listeners feeling like they've been through a major experience.

Mimi Stillman introduced Debussy's Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp by noting, as she often does, that it's a major work in the repertoire of all three instruments. One of her favorite perks as artistic director of Dolce Suono, she said, is the power to program that sonata as often as she likes.

I share her affinity for the piece, and I'm happy to hear it as often as she wants to schedule it, even though I have to keep finding new things to say about it. Fortunately, I hear something new every time Stillman and Company perform it.

Harpist shines

This was the most balanced performance I've heard. The center of interest changes constantly as Debussy plays with different colors and combinations, and my attention moved from instrument to instrument, exactly as Debussy must have intended.

The harpist for this occasion deserves some of the credit for that effect. Elizabeth White Clark is a third year student at Curtis, but she's also the American Harp Society's "Young Concert Artist," and she didn't let her older colleagues upstage her.

The Debussy celebration ends on May 19 with a concert devoted to the least familiar aspect of his work: his songs. The program will include new songs by the winners of Dolce Suono's first Young Composers Competition— another example of the unexpected twists Mimi Stillman adds to the themes she chooses for Dolce Suono programs.