DIVINE BAROQUE

Prague Castle

March 6

St. Lawrence Church

March 4

Putting some pizazz in Moliere.

There are times when Prague can seem like Baroque heaven, offering so much early music that you need wings to keep up with it all. Two concerts over the weekend provided not only divine listening, but a reminder of how many different forms and variations the genre encompasses.

Collegium Marianum continued its rewarding collaboration with French artists on Sunday, teaming with actors Bastien Ossat and Clotilde Daniault for an evening of comedic scenes from Molière spliced into a musical program of Lully and Charpentier. The setting was the Ball Game Hall of Prague Castle, a great facility for aristocratic sports in the 17^th century, but a terrible modern-day concert hall. Long, boxy and sterile, it offers about 10 rows of good seating. Beyond that, the acoustics are a disaster and the band seems remote, a miniature wind-up diorama at the far end of a giant shoebox.

But the music was outstanding, with the ensemble turning in its usual blend of spirited interpretation and technical expertise. Much of French Baroque, particularly the work of Lully and Charpentier, is rooted in song and dance, and the sound is bright and energetic. A variety of percussion instruments picked up the pace even more, so that the closing piece, selections from Lully’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, sounded like a 17th-century garden party in full swing.

The setting made it hard to appreciate the fine points of the playing, which is one of the hallmarks of Collegium Marianum. But even at a distance, the ensemble’s principal flutist and artistic director, Jana Semerádová, was impressive – running the group, as usual, playing several different flutes and percussion instruments, and occasionally acting in the comedy skits. As if all that weren’t enough, her French is excellent, too.

The acting was a lively version of the mannered face-the-audience Baroque style, with Daniault practically crawling on top of Ossat in a scene from Les femmes savantes. Both actors seemed quite good and highly skilled in the genre – but oddly, their three scenes did not elicit a single laugh from the audience. Communication didn’t seem to be a problem; the actors were practically yelling to compensate for the poor acoustics, and helpful flat screens along one side of the hall provided Czech subtitles. This reviewer, sadly lacking in both French and Czech language skills, is at a loss to explain why the comedy skits fell flat.

On Friday night, an entirely different style of Baroque packed St. Lawrence Church, where a stripped-down Collegium 1704 ensemble – five instruments and a singer – reprised several Henry Purcell favorites, along with selections from Matthew Locke and William Lawes. The music was more somber, in keeping with its primarily spiritual orientation, inspirational in tone and occasionally spellbinding, especially Purcell’s captivating vocal lines.

Chapel-sized St. Lawrence is a sweet place to hear chamber music, and the ensemble improved on the acoustics by moving off the stage and onto the floor. That cut the seating a bit, but gave the music a deep bottom and exceptionally warm resonance. With lush violins carrying most of the melodies and crisp harpsichord passages bridging the selections, the sound was the aural equivalent of the golden hour before sundown, when everything is bathed in a soft, warm glow.

The setting was also good for Markéta Cukrová’s voice, which sounded rich and full, nicely balanced with the instruments. If her diction was less than perfect in English, her emotional expression more than made up for it, especially on an achingly beautiful rendition of Purcell’s Bess of Bedlam.

Taken together, the concerts were a perfect kickoff for the Lenten season – the carnival atmosphere on Sunday night presaging Ash Wednesday, and the spiritual reflections of Friday night setting a meditative, even penitential tone for the 40 days of Lent. If their quality is any indication, the ensembles’ Easter concerts should be glorious.

For a schedule of upcoming performances:

By Collegium Marianum: http://www.baroknipodvecery.cz/barokni-podvecery/program-2011/

By Collegium 1704: http://www.collegium1704.com/en/calendar.html

THE VILLAGE & THE VANGUARD

Estates Theater

March 1

Salon Philharmonia

February 28

Bohuš (Jiří Hájek) is reunited with his father (Pavel Horáček).

Opera is typically thought of as a sophisticated art form where only the best voices, greatest music and most elaborate productions can thrive. But in the Czech lands, its folk roots run deep, and the popularity of native operas is more often a measure of how well they capture the spirit and charm of village life.

So it’s entirely appropriate that Dvořák’s Jakobín, the third production in the Opera 2011 festival, seemed like a spirited amateur effort – even though it came from the well-respected J.K. Tyla Theater in Plzeň. The sets were simple, the voices mostly adequate, and the orchestra was only a couple notches above a local ensemble playing in a park gazebo on a Sunday afternoon. But it was all a perfect fit for a celebration of village life and values with a vague political hook.

Its French Revolution title notwithstanding, Jakobín is the story of an exiled son coming home. Most of the action takes place on a Bohemian village square and in the village schoolhouse, and much of the singing is done by dancing villagers and apple-cheeked schoolchildren. The third act opens at the castle of Count Vilém, whose returning son Bohuš has been imprisoned for alleged Jacobin sympathies. Up to then, the Count has been a distant figure – in this production, singing from an offstage box. But a tender song is enough to touch his heart, free his son, and bring a romantic subplot to a happy conclusion.

Even that whisper of politics was largely absent from this production, which devoted great energy to the ensemble pieces, cultural traditions, familial yearning (a film projection showed young Bohuš with his father and late mother) and light comedy. The dominant character was not the Count, but Filip, the Count’s aging Burgrave, who looked silly trying to court young Terinka, the schoolmaster’s daughter. It’s probably no coincidence that Jevhen Šokalo, who played the Burgrave as a clumsy fop, also had the strongest voice of the evening.

All of which went down very well with the packed house at the Estates Theater, which laughed and applauded in all the right places. The production may have lacked finesse, but it was heartfelt in a way that obviously touched the audience. And even the best opera productions don’t always hit that mark.

 Cellist Balázs Adorján.

This being Prague, sophisticated music is fortunately never far away, as a quartet of cellists demonstrated the previous evening. Two members of the Prague Philharmonia orchestra, Balász Adorján and Teodor Brcko, were joined by two Slovak colleagues, Jozef Lupták and Andrej Gál, for the debut performance of the Shafran Quartet, named for the legendary Russian cello player Daniil Shafran.

Their programming was outstanding – four sets of three or four wildly different pieces, juxtaposed or spliced together in inventive fashion. The first set was probably the most interesting: Bach’s Wer nur den lieben Gott (BWV 642), Rodion Ščedrin’s Hamlet Ballad and Prokofiev’s Scherzo Humoristique. The Bach piece is a sacred work for organ; the Ščedrin piece was commissioned for the International Cello Congress held in Kobe, Japan, in 2005, where it was performed by a thousand cellists directed by Mstislav Rostropovich; and the Prokofiev piece was composed for four bassoons.

These translated to scoring for four cellos with varying degrees of success, which was true of the entire evening. But the audacity was admirable, and the playing was excellent. All four cellists showed sharp technical command and strong expression. Most intriguing were the sonic effects that four cellos can create, especially when they’re playing the same notes. It’s like the quartet has erected a sound chamber around itself, with its own deep internal dynamics. And far from being monotonous, the four instruments playing together gives each one a distinctive voice, something hard to achieve with a cello.

The Shafran Quartet will likely not appear again soon. As Adorján noted afterward, there are a very limited number of compositions for four cellos (thus the stretch to other works), and the split locations of the players (two live in Prague, two in Bratislava) create some daunting “logistical problems.” But their Monday concert was a bracing reminder of what adventurous musicians can accomplish, and the discoveries that await in unconventional approaches to sophisticated music.