Early Music: III

Monday evening's final program of the Cambridge Society for Early Music seemed to suffer from a paralysis of over-refinement. While the music wanted to skip up the aisles of Sanders Theater, or in its serene moments, stretch out on its back and smile up at the ceiling, most of the performers held on to it with a mortal fear of spontaneity. Thus two sonatas by Bach and two by Mozart were unduly tame in a generally competent, but uninspired performance.

The evening's redeeming feature were the compositions themselves. A composer can weave simple musical threads into a dazzling fabric or unravel good broad-cloth until it is lint. Bach and Mozart chose to weave simple tunes into golden cloth.

Bach's Sonata No. 3 in E major for violin and klavier opened the program. In the classic manner, the gamba, with its forest of tuning pegs, doubled the continuo of the harpsichord. The trio maintained a nice balance; its members played to each other. But slippery intonation and lack of clarity marred the violin's performance, and the harpsichord indulged in unjustified rubatos and changes of tempi.

In parts of the Sonata No. 2 in D major for gamba and klavier, the double-manualed harpsichord sounded as if it were sporadically unwinding. It is no criticism of the gamba to observe that it lacks intensity in the ranges where the cello would have it, but the notes themselves seemed lackadaisically defined in the fast passages, and the general shape of the concluding fast movement was unclear.

Two of Mozart's trios for violin, cello, and piano, Nos. 3 and 5, constituted the second half of the program. The string players seemed to have warmed up, but at the same time some of the distinctions between pitch levels melted. In addition, the technically able pianist lacked finesse in rounding off phrases.

The concert could have been enjoyed by a sufficiently tired listener, or by one who heard only the compositions and not the performance; a display of musical prowess it was not.