Capriccio Baroque opened its annual Festival Capriccio on Saturday night with Jory Vinikour playing harpsichord works from the French High Baroque at Live! At 10th and G. 

The festival’s theme this year is “Counterpoints,” and it will showcase the harpsichord (no surprise) throughout musical history. Vinikour’s dazzling performances of music he knows and loves — he played the entire concert from memory — made sure the festival began with a strong foundation in the harpsichord’s golden age.

A Suite in F major by Louis Couperin (brother to the prolific François) opened the concert. In the suite’s Prelude, Vinikour seemed to conjure a path through its unmarked rhythms on the spot while finding the right twists and turns for the noble melody. Several dance movements followed, dispatched by Vinikour with sparkling technique and infectious dance rhythms. A Chaconne felt less contrapuntal than one might expect, but full of light and grace in Vinikour’s rendition.

Time seemed to stop for the final piece in the Couperin suite, the “Tombeau de M. de Blancrocher,” written for the great lutenist after his untimely death falling down a flight of stairs. This music stays mostly in the major mode but nevertheless feels solemn and tender at once. Vinikour adeptly shaped each moment but kept the overall arc of the piece in mind, balancing its affects and musical elements to create a moving memorial.

Vinikour received a Grammy nomination for his album of the complete harpsichord works of Jean-Philippe Rameau, and the composer’s Suite in D Major sounded terrific both on that record and live Saturday night. Rameau’s opening piece, The Tender Laments, sounded like a counterpoint to the Couperin tombeau with its plaintive minor-mode melody, studded with wrenching trills. Vinikour took the ingenuous theme of “The Simpletons of Sologne” at a spacious tempo, making room for the ornate variations that followed, playing all the flurries of notes Rameau gives the performer with no apparent strain. “The Little Madcap” had a jaunty yet insistent drive, while Vinikour sustained the melodies in “The Conversation of the Muses” so that the contemplative discussion never faltered.

In the famous closing showcase “The Cyclopes,” with its hammering motif, Vinikour never went over the top, preferring to play the notes cleanly and in rhythm and let the result speak for itself — a rousing conclusion to this endlessly inventive suite.

The final composer on the program, Jacques Duphly, died in 1789, a bit after the apex of the High Baroque, and one could hear some advances towards the classical style in La Forqueray, or a bit of storm and stress in the dark La Médée. Vinikour changed his approach appropriately and brought out the best of these attractive pieces.

Duphly’s Chaconne, which concluded the program, was a stunner, with a full range of invention including a searching minor-mode middle section. Vinikour gave the Chaconne the space it needed to have its full effect, making individual variations vivid and also making them parts of a grand structure with a satisfying conclusion.

For his first encores, Vinikour performed two pieces in succession from Rameau’s Suite in E minor/major. A sweet “Musette en rondeau” set up “Le tambourin” (named for a Provençal folk dance, not the tambourine), a thrilling storm of notes in a driving rhythm. 

Called out for one more encore, Vinikour performed Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre’s Chaconne in D, which had tricky rhythmic shifts that posed Vinikour no problems in a commanding performance. This event provided a rousing start to what looks to be another fascinating installment of Festival Capriccio.

Festival Capriccio features Janine Johnson playing the world premiere of her neo-Baroque work “The Therapeutic Harpsichord” November 4. capricciobaroque.org

Leave a Comment

Name (required):

Email (will not be published) (required):

Website:

Message:

Δ