DANCE AND MUSIC REVIEWS : KUIJKEN QUARTET

The Kuijken Quartet’s Bach program had its troubles Sunday afternoon at Wadsworth Theater. The wonted stylistic refinement of this group of Baroque specialists was everywhere apparent, but so was a lack of concentration.

Twice the ensemble had to regroup and begin movements again, when one of the players had started without the music. The frequent stops for tuning between movements further fractured the musical train of thought.

Acoustically stuffy Wadsworth is hardly the ideal setting for this kind of music-making. The Kuijken plays period instruments, which besides being notoriously difficult to keep in tune, do not project as powerfully as their modern equivalents.

Moreover, the Kuijken style emphasizes the intimacies of interpretive nuance rather than blunt rhythmic drive. The three Kuijken brothers and harpsichordist Robert Kohnen have been playing together for a long time, and they clearly knew the music thoroughly.

Much of Bach’s chamber music is apparently lost, but the program devoted to him still showed pleasing variety. The Trio Sonata in D for organ, BWV 529, proved a charmer in an ensemble adaptation, although the harpsichord part sounded superfluous.

The Trio Sonata from the “Musical Offering” is one of the monuments of the form and the Kuijken performance did it full justice, probing its complexities with expressive intensity. Misintonation and blurred articulation made occasional appearances throughout the program, but when concentrating fully, the Kuijkens project an impeccable sense of ensemble.

Each of the brothers had a solo turn. The most impressive of these, the Sonata in D, BWV 1028, displayed not only the gamba prowess of Wieland Kuijken, but the keyboard fluency of Kohnen as well.

Barthold Kuijken’s rhapsodically free account of the Partita for solo flute lost all contact with the dance impetus, save in the Bourree. Sigiswald Kuijken’s artfully pointed reading of the Violin Sonata in G, BWV 1021, somehow remained stubbornly uninvolving.