The Harpsichord, Handel and Landowska

Sunday’s recital by Montreal harpsichordist Geneviève Soly at Trinity Episcopal Church in Lime Rock was a fitting tribute to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of Wanda Landowksa, beloved Lakeville resident and world-renowned musician and scholar.

Soly, herself a respected musicologist, brought a short program of Bach and Handel, and a curiosity in the form of a little march by Christoph Graupner, their contemporary. Virtually ignored until this century, his vast output — more than 2,000 works — is now being recorded, thanks in large part to the work of Soly.

She began with straightforward readings of three preludes and fugues from the first book of the “Well-Tempered Clavier,� filled with subtle rhythmic nuance. Her comments on each piece, delivered in a lilting accent, informed the audience about the numerological and symbolic secrets Bach wove into his masterpieces.

The “Marche en Rondeau� was something of an anticlimax after the sonata by Handel, who appropriated its theme and turned it into a delightful romp. More satisfying was the encore, a little Graupner gem entitled “Somelle,� which displayed a bit more inventiveness in harmony and counterpoint. His music bears more investigation, and one looks forward to hearing more of it in Soly’s capable hands.

 Handel’s “Suite in F,â€� excerpts from which closed the program, is a sublime and noble work, with an introductory Adagio perfectly described by Landowska: “Luminous, it unfolds voluptuously between slender columns of thirds...translucid and animated as a brook.â€�

Soly forged through the heat and humidity of the afternoon, which made the whirring fans a necessary but regrettable background to the delicate sounds of the fine single-manual instrument made by Norfolk builder Carl Dudash, and beautifully decorated by his wife, Marilee.

The next events in the yearlong anniversary series are a lecture and concert of Bach on Saturday, Sept. 12, at 6:30 p.m. at Music Mountain; readings of Landowska’s work with Margaret Juntwait, Metropolitan Opera host, at Scoville Memorial Library in Salisbury; and a festival of harpsichord music at Simon’s Rock College on Saturday, Sept. 26, at 7:30 p.m.

Hundreds of visitors to last Saturday morning’s open rehearsal at Tanglewood were greatly disappointed to find that the program had been switched at the last minute from Sunday’s all-Brahms program with Kurt Masur and Garrick Ohlsson to the Saturday evening program with André Previn conducting Ravel’s “La Valse� and Liszt’s “Concerto No. 2� with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet. Listeners to Saturday evening’s broadcast actually got a better balance of sound than was the case in the shed, where the orchestra often overwhelmed the soloist.

Thibaudet is an extraordinary pianist, but I wish that his talents had been applied to music of more substance. The Ravel was smooth and undulating, and with Previn’s careful reshaping of some tricky passages, sounded terrific.  After the harpists and a number of other players left the stage, we hoped to hear the rarely performed “Symphony No. 4,â€� by Beethoven, but Previn, who turned 80 in April, walked slowly and hesitantly with a cane back to the podium, and after a few brief soundbites and instructions to the band, waved them goodbye, and that was that.

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