CzechMate quartet delivers superb program of baroque works

From Prague to Tasmania: Baroque Without Borders
★★★★½
Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House, May 10

When I first encountered early 17th century music several decades ago, I confess I found much of it more interesting than successful. No sooner would a section begin with sweet polyphony, a plaintive recitative or a spirited dance than it would stop and head off in a totally different direction as though eager to sample all the new possibilities that early baroque basso continuo technique offered, yet without developing any one of them in any depth. While that partly reflects my anachronistic perspective at the time, there is no doubt that the sophistication of performers playing this music has progressed in leaps and bounds since.

Enter CzechMate, an expert quartet put together by Australian-born historical bassoonist Jane Gower, with Swedish harpsichordist Lars Ulrik Mortensen, Czech baroque violinist Helena Zemanová and Melbourne-born violinist Julia Fredersdorff in a superb program of Italian, German and Austrian early baroque instrumental works.

Combining a persuasive sense of rhythmic freedom, accent and melodic direction with exquisitely coloured tonal focus, they created a stylish inner musical narrative in which the music’s hyperactive volatility was, as Shakespeare put it, no more troubling than a dream.

In Dario Castello’s Sonata 9, the violins played lines of silvery luminescence, Mortensen drew elegantly nuanced accents from the harpsichord, while Gower, playing the dulcian, an early bassoon-like instrument fashioned from a single piece of cherrywood, supplied richly textured lines with the subtly fuzzy finish of brown velvet. In Sonata Seconda by Giovanni Battista Fontana, Zemanová’s tone combined singing sweetness with bold expressive projection, not to mention impeccable intonation.

Mortensen played Toccata VII by Michelangelo Rossi as though his fingers were in direct contact with the harpsichord strings, shaping the articulation with the intimate expressiveness of a clavichord. In 2 Ricercares by Diego Ortiz, Gower mined the expressive range of her noble instrument further, and gave emphatic resonance to its splendidly low bass in Dario Castello’s Sonata 10. Francesco Turini’s Sonata 19 mixed serene polyphonic textures of radiantly clear string tone with brief eruptive moments of furious activity.

Moving to German music, Johann Balthasar Erben’s Sonata ut-re-mi was structured around mellifluous imitation, while in Philipp Friedrich Buchner’s Sonata 8, Fredersdorf adorned the flowing lines with suave ornamentation. As though to summarise, and even parody what had gone before, Johann Heinrich Schmelzer’s Polnische Sackpfeifen mixed gracious contrapuntal passages with heavy dances, folk-like hijinks and bagpipe drones, ending not with a thump, but an enigmatic question, left hanging.

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