This past Friday Jonathan Salzedo sent out electronic mail apologizing for the technical glitches encountered during a live-stream performance from the campus of the Maybeck Christian Science Church in Berkeley on Sunday, April 11. He announced that he had resolved those problems with a remix of the audio and the video, the results of which are now available as a YouTube video. However, I should let viewers know that I have taken to watching YouTube through my xfinity app; and the audio during the last ten minutes of the video left much to be desired. On the other hand both watching and listening from my computer was a great pleasure.
As was the case this past January, the concert was a quartet performance led by Jonathan Salzedo at the harpsichord. He was joined by his wife Marion Rubinstein on recorder, his daughter Laura Jeannin on violin, and Roy Wheldon on gamba. The entire quartet began and concluded the program playing Salzedo’s arrangements of works composed for other resources.
The opening selection was Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 992 Capriccio on the departure of a beloved brother, originally composed for solo keyboard. The conclusion was Antonio Vivaldi’s RV 524, a concerto in B-flat major scored for two solo violins and strings. Both of these pieces held up well under transcription. The solo lines of the Vivaldi concerto were just as convincing when played by violin and recorder, and Salzedo and Wheldon dutifully filled in the rest. In BWV 992, on the other hand, the diverse instrumentation brought new clarity to the programmatic titles of the individual movements, whose titles were read aloud by Salzedo (in English) prior to their respective performances.
These ensemble selections framed the Bach selections, both in G major, with Salzedo on harpsichord. The first of these was the BWV 1019 violin sonata, followed by the BWV 1027 gamba sonata (which I knew better as the BWV 1039 trio sonata for two flutes and continuo). Throughout the entire program, the video work frequently provided split-screen images of the individual performers; and that technique was particularly valuable in the visual account of both of these sonatas. I have to say that I particularly liked the layout that juxtaposed the “broad view” of Salzedo and Jeannin playing BWV 1019 with an overhead shot of Salzedo’s fingering:
screen shot from the video being discussed
Taken as a whole, the program was a delightful juxtaposition of unfamiliar Vivaldi with three Bach compositions that would benefit from more attention than they usually get.
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