Divided world of the baroque: Europa Galante splits Palladium program between Bach and Vivaldi

Europa Galante founder Fabio Biondi in action

Some fascinating indications of Italianate flair showed up in the first piece in Europa Galante's concert Thursday night at the Palladium. Soloist-founder Fabio Biondi varied the two-note tag at the end of the leading phrase of the Presto finale of J.S. Bach's Violin Concerto in G minor.

The tag is literally an echo, and at first Biondi played it that way. Eighteenth-century music was fond of echo effects, and Bach often used them in cantatas so that the echoed phrase reinforced the meaning of the sung text preceding it. But the tag can also be rendered as emphatic punctuation, matching the ensemble's manner. It's very assertive music, and the reinforcement helps. There's room also to ornament those two notes, and Biondi did that as well toward the end. All told, appealing variety in one little detail.

The modest-sized audience at the Center for the Performing Arts showplace was to find out after intermission how much hand-in-glove Biondi and Europa Galante, the original-instruments ensemble he founded in 1989, are with Antonio Vivaldi. The rapport with Bach, the German master who never visited Italy (unlike his cosmopolitan contemporary G.F. Handel, whom Italian musical circles knew as "Il Sassone") was more distant. 

I was glad for the perky performance of one of Bach's "greatest hits" — Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, with its solo parts neatly shared by a flutist (on the mellow-toned baroque instrument) and Biondi, with of course the other substantial soloing assigned to the harpsichord. The famous first-movement keyboard cadenza was dramatically fashioned, with an especially theatrical pause — hands raised — before the unaccompanied episode's sweeping peroration. 

In between the solo violin concerto and the Brandenburg came Biondi's performance of the Sonata No. 2 in A minor for unaccompanied violin. Having heard this work a few times in the preliminary round of the recent International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, I was missing the brilliance of the modern violin and particularly the clarity and verve of the young contestants' string crossings in the second-movement fugue. Biondi's negotiation of that movement seemed effortful, though his experience with the expressive richness of the music came through.

Nonetheless, when he picked up the viola d'amore after intermission for Vivaldi's Concerto in D minor, RV393, he and his ensemble shone in a manner that soared above their Bach playing. Though I had reveled in the assertiveness of the "ripieno" (literally, "back bench") contingent in the Brandenburg, it was an extra treat to hear the ensemble in full force in the second half's two concertos, with a lute sparkling in the continuo part. 

The second one, which could be topped only by such an encore as the Presto from "Summer"  ('The Four Seasons"), brought the announced program to a close. Back on violin, Biondi was joined by a fellow violinist in the "concertino" part and by one of two cellists (the second didn't have the prominence the program book indicated). There was plenty of ordered tumult in the D major concerto's outer movements, the finale of which spurred a roaring ovation, surpassed by whoops of delight when Biondi announced the encore.

The work offered extensive opportunity to hear how well Europa Galante manages the strata of dynamic levels and the distribution of lyrical panache, both of which are more of a feature in Vivaldi than in Bach. Though there's little doubt of the ensemble's saturation in 18th-century sound and performance practice, it's no surprise that this band is most at home in Italy, particularly in capturing the flair of the prolific "Red Priest." Bach himself was not immune from borrowing some of that trans-alpine quality in his music, though he never traveled outside northern Germany. 

Thursday's program was certainly well-balanced, but the palm goes to the Vivaldi portion.