Playing for Baroque

Jennifer K Mahal

When was the last time you heard a tune on a lute? How about a

harpsichord? A recorder? A viola da gamba?

The Harmonia Baroque Players present the soft sounds of 17th century

music played on period-style instruments Sunday at Newport Harbor

Lutheran Church.

The concert, titled “Music for a Well-Tempered Audience,” is the first

of three programs the Players will present in Newport Beach. The other

two programs will take place in January and May.

“When I founded [Harmonia Baroque], I didn’t even have any real

purpose of a concert series,” said Marika Frankl, a retired medical

technologist and physicist who started the group in 1984. “I just wanted

to play Baroque chamber music with Baroque instruments.”

The Orange County group consists of a professional set of musicians

who come together to play pieces from the Renaissance and Baroque

periods.

Baroque music differs from classical music in a number of ways, Frankl

said. The tuning is different, and the instruments -- such as the

recorder Frankl plays -- are softer in quality.

Harpsichordist Barbara King echoes that.

“The instruments don’t have the loudness,” she said. “The Baroque

flute is very elegant and, in comparison to the modern flute, softer. The

harpsichord has a brilliance of sound that the piano doesn’t have, but it

cannot equal the instrument’s loudness.”

And the different sound “profile” of the instruments affects the way

the music is played.

“A Baroque flutist doesn’t play the flute the way a modern flutist

would,” King said.

Well-known Baroque composers include J.S. Bach, Georg Philipp

Telemann, Antonio Vivaldi and George Frideric Handel. Among the pieces to

be performed Sunday are Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in D major and Prelude

and Fugue in D minor, Telemann’s Sonata in F minor for treble recorder

and guitar, Robert de Visee’s Suite in G major for flute, guitar and

viola da gamba, and four lute entrees by Robert Ballard.

The musicians for the performance will be Frankl on recorder, King on

harpsichord, Richard Glenn on lute and Baroque guitar, Phillip Schlosberg

on viola da gamba and Richard Wilson on Baroque flute.

Lutist Glenn said he can’t put a percentage on the number of people

who like Baroque music.

“It’s not as popular as the classical period -- Mozart, Haydn,

Beethoven,” said Glenn, who also teaches music at Orange Coast College,

Concordia University and UC Riverside. “It’s a specialized sound.”

But Glenn said he thinks the popularity of the Baroque sound is

growing.

“It takes a little while for the ear to adjust,” Glenn said. “It’s

sort of like learning how to drink fine wines. You have to acquire a

taste for it.”

King, who, after working as a computer programmer in the 1960s, went

back to school in the ‘80s for a music degree, said she thinks the more

people listen to the music, the more they will like it.

“I sometimes think if young people could hear some of this music,

they’d realize it’s fun, and they’d enjoy it,” King said. “But they never

do hear it.”

FYI

WHAT: Harmonia Baroque Players present “Music for a Well-Tempered

Audience”

WHEN: 4 p.m. Sunday

WHERE: Newport Harbor Lutheran Church, 798 Dover Ave., Newport Beach

COST: $10-$12, $25-$30 for subscription to all three concerts.

CALL: (714) 970-8545

WEB SITE: https://www.ocartsnet.org/harmonia