MUSIC REVIEW : Trio Sonnerie’s Ear-Opener at Museum

The concert Wednesday by the Trio Sonnerie in the Bing Theater of the County Museum of Art seemed intended primarily to show off a new instrument: the violin.

Not some recent, lab-developed electronic marvel but the hand- crafted wooden, four-stringed model that has been playing a central role in the development both of musical form and virtuoso performance for nearly four centuries.

What differentiated Wednesday’s program even from most period-performance concerts was that Trio Sonnerie--violinist Monica Huggett, viola da gamba player Sarah Cunningham, harpsichordist Mitzi Meyerson--offered works not from the 18th Century, but less familiar repertory from the middle- and late-17th, when composers throughout Europe were frenziedly exploiting the instrument’s (and the performer’s) technical and expressive potential.

The composers involved read less like a Who’s Who than a “Who?”: Giovanni Battista Fontana, Thomas Baltzar, J.H. Schmelzer. Buxtehude and Biber seemed like old friends under the circumstances.

With the exception of two relatively formal sonatas by Buxtehude, the works offered proved exceedingly free in form and tonality--call them sets of variations or improvisations, each demanding the virtuosity which Huggett unfailingly supplied.

The British violinist is a central, influential (as teacher and performer) figure in today’s search for authenticity. But she is no dessicated didact.

Huggett’s playing projects tremendous rhythmic vitality and technical aplomb in addition to scholarship. Her work on Wednesday should have laid to rest any lingering suspicion that those who can, play modern instruments; those who can’t, seek refuge in scholarship. Huggett’s remarkably pure intonation on her gut-strung fiddle is a marvel in itself, sufficient to shame many a performer on the intonationally more reliable, metal-strung modern instrument.

The program also included two works not involving the violin: a soporific gamba suite by one Sieur de Machy (his dates, to quote the program booklet, are “?-?”), elegantly presented by Cunningham, and a digitally dazzling, stylish performance by harpsichordist Meyerson of some fascinating, at times agonizedly chromatic variations from Buxtehude’s “La Capricciosa.”