An Evening of Baroque Music

Jeff Green | Feb 03, 2016

The concert of Baroque music at the Cardinal Café on Saturday night was the first of a planned series of concerts there. Edwin Huizinga, who is one of a few people in the world who play the Baroque repertoire on a period instrument on a full-time basis, said at the beginning that Baroque music was often played, not in concert halls, but in small cafes in Vienna and the surrounding region almost 300 years ago.

The cafe is located in the lovingly renovated, former Sharbot Lake Catholic Church. Although the cultural references in the music are lost on most modern Frontenac and Lanark County residents, the music had such energy and musicality in the hands of the two musicians, and the church has such great acoustics that it sounded like genuinely modern music.

This is a testament, not only to the unique talent of J. S. Bach, the composer who wrote most of the music performed on Saturday night, but also to the contemporary sensibility of the performers.

The first piece of the evening was for solo violin, Bach's Partita in E Major. The first thing that was apparent, apart from Huizinga's personal presence, was the acoustics in the cafe. The sound filled the hall completely, as if it were springing off the violin, Huizinga's breathing providing a bit of a counterpoint. Then the music itself took hold, the themes playing with each other, back and forth, the pace changing and changing again; the clarity of sound creating an unexpected emotionally punch, from exhilaration to tears in equal measure.

The next piece introduced Philip Fournier and the harpsichord, the Bach B Minor Obbligato Sonata for Violin and Harpsichord.

After the solo violin piece it took a minute or two to get used to the sound of the two instruments playing together. In the hands of the two players, the interplay between the two added more and more depth and by the end of the Sonata the audience was buzzing with enthusiasm.

The second half of the concert started with a sonata by Jean Marie Leclair, followed by a Bach Prelude and Fugue played by Fournier alone on Harpsichord. As good as the two were as a duo, there was something special about the solo pieces, a chance to focus, as a listener, on a single instrument played with facility and sensitivity. Fournier's solo performance was as satisfying as Huizinga's had been at the start of the concert.

The final piece of the night was also by J.S. Bach, the G Major Sonata. It was a show stopper, literally, as the audience broke into a standing ovation after the first movement, leading Huizinga, somewhat sheepishly, to inform the crowd after they stopped clapping that “there are four more movements, but maybe we can think of them as four short encores.”

Jonas Bonnetta, who organized the show, said he hopes to put another one on, likely jazz next time, in May. He said that as a way of tying the series together, tickets to the next concert might come with a recording of this one. The Cardinal Café will be closed for February and re-open on March 1.