A Lesson in String Theory

Judging from the turnout for Aston Magna at Simon’s Rock, Saturday, violinist Daniel Stepner is right. There will always be a joyous audience for Baroque music played on early instruments.

   But Stepner, the group’s director, likes to tell how J.S. Bach,  the  composer who brought the Baroque to sublime heights, took one look at the just-invented pianoforte with its dynamic range and hall-filling power and fell for it, as a performer, composer and as a businessman.

   All I’m saying here is, if Vivaldi  and Bach and Telemann had had modern, not Baroque, violins, they might have fallen for them, too.

   That’s because early string instruments have charms, but those charms are not always in evidence in concert halls, even small concert halls like this one. That was clear during the slow movement of Bach’s glorious Concerto for Oboe and Violin, BWV 1060. Stephen Hammer, performing on an early, elegant woodwind, cheerfully drowned out Stepner, who was battling the odds on his early, elegant violin with its gut strings and other adjustments that render it authentic, relatively powerless and, occasionally, furry. (Some musicians, like the recorder players in Berkshire Bach’s New Year’s Eve performances, use microphones so they can be heard, not just seen. Improper, of course, but helpful.)   

   With that out of the way, though, this concert was a delight. All the performers stood, adding drama and commitment to the performance, except, of course,  Jonathan Oddie, playing harpsichord, and Loretta O’Sullivan, whose gorgeous and sonorous Baroque cello balanced between her knees, not on the floor.

   The rest of the string players standing allowed all of us seated in the audience to see so clearly the difference between playing modern and playing early violins. Andrew Fouts showed us best. As relaxed as any country boy playing a fiddle, instead of gripping his instrument under his jaw, he settled it, like a little bird, on his shoulder. That’s because his left hand, not occupied by producing a constant vibrato or reaching into the heights much beyond second or third position, was freer to support the neck. That’s the Baroque way, people like Stepner say. And so says Stanley Ritchie, a founding member of Aston Magna, and head of the Early Music Institute at Indiana University in Bloomington. He is a suave performer who made his early bow bounce and crackle all over his early violin, getting gorgeous, expressive and sometimes boisterous sounds throughout his performance of  Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.â€�

   Aston Magna will continue to celebrate its 35th season with more concerts at Simon’s Rock in Great Barrington, and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA, and at Bard College in Red Hook, NY.

   Daniel Stepner,     artistic director of  

Aston Magna. For information on the group’s summer programs, check the  Compass calendar or call  413-528-3595.