Trio Camille and Buxtehude Consort

Matt Bengtson is a pianist and John Fowler is a baritone, but they're both examples of an important contemporary phenomenon. Both performers create opportunities for themselves and enhance our cultural lives as they promote their careers.

This seems to be a general trend throughout the art world. Musicians are becoming more entrepreneurial at the same time that writers are taking on promotional chores that publishers used to handle. In this brave new world, arts journalists like me must put up with a harrying increase in the mass of publicity material flowing into our inboxes, but it's in a good cause.

I've only heard Matt Bengtson play in chamber concerts with his Trio Camille, but he maintains a busy schedule, as soloist and chamber player, across the Philadelphia region and points beyond. He's a sensitive, gifted pianist who has teamed up with a formidable cellist, Michal Schmidt, also an accomplished pianist in her own right. The third member of Trio Camille, violinist Min-Young Kim, is a newcomer to my personal orbit, but I haven't seen any signs that she's outclassed by her partners.

Tchaikovsky's major workout

For its latest outing in the rooftop lounge of Penn's Harnwell House, high above West Philadelphia, Trio Camille opened with a performance of Haydn's Gypsy trio that communicated Haydn's good-natured gaiety from the first bar. The only other item on the program was a major workout: Tchaikovsky's one and only piano trio.

Tchaikovsky felt he had written a symphony and forced it on three instruments, and that about sums up this piece. The trio contains all the soul and melody you expect to hear when a major orchestra launches into a Tchaikovsky symphony.

It's a marathon for the pianist, but it's no vacation for the string players. The listeners taking their ease in the rooftop lounge armchairs heard a powerful performance in a perfect setting for chamber music.

Strong male voices

John Fowler's Buxtehude Consort specializes in Baroque vocal music accompanied by period instruments. I last heard them at their inaugural concert, at the low point of the current recession. This time around, they presented Lenten music at the pinnacle of the high church tradition in Philadelphia: St. Clement's in Center City.

Fowler's vocal quintet fields some good male voices. Fowler himself is an authoritative baritone, and Steve Bradshaw contributes a supple, effective tenor. But the star of the male contingent was the countertenor, Ian Howell.

Howell is another countertenor who can best be described as a true male alto— a vocalist with an alto range supported by a male chest cavity. He's also an artist who sings his ornaments— an important aspect of Baroque music— as if he understands their purpose in every line the composer gives him.

Absence of a conductor

The Buxtehude Consort sings without a conductor— the standard practice when this music was composed. But at times they could have used a check from a listener posted in the middle of the hall. The soloists sometimes drifted into inaudibility during the softer passages.

The high points were a Baroque standard, Pergolesi's Stabat Mater of 1732, and the American premiere (after some 300 years) of a 13-movement work by the 17th-Century opera composer Francesco Provenzale.

Both pieces deal with rather doleful Lenten subjects, but Provenzale wasn't afraid to be sprightly when the text gave him an excuse, and he managed to throw in some charming duets, with inspired interactions between the two voices. The final chorus was a beautifully executed exercise in pure joy, with the violins dancing away, singers and instrumentalists executing tricky pauses and runs, and the whole company creating a general air of exuberance.

Female first

I believe this is the first time I've heard the Pergolesi Stabat Mater sung by a female soprano and a male alto. Pergolesi wrote it for two male voices, but he might have enjoyed the contrasts created by the timbres of Molly Quinn's colorful soprano and Ian Howell's equally colorful alto.

Pergolesi was blessed with a genius for creating varied, moving music, and he lightened up as the text turned from the crucifixion to the afterlife. The amen handed him an opportunity for an upbeat ending, and he seized it with enthusiasm. His grand climax might have seemed a bit tame to the lads in the local boom-boom bars, but it provided a satisfactory Saturday night finale for those us with less boisterous tastes.