MUSIC REVIEW : Chamber Program Dampers Baroque Fest

The Corona del Mar Baroque Music Festival ran into trouble at its chamber music program Friday at the Sherman Library and Gardens. Veteran harpsichordist Malcolm Hamilton was having an uncharacteristically bad day. Make that a very bad day.

Anyone can make a mistake or two, and no one needs to dwell on the problem. But Hamilton distressingly exceeded the bounds of acceptable playing by his own or anyone’s standards.

He repeatedly made errors, dropped notes, fudged passages, broke phrases and lost momentum in solo works by Handel, Bach and Scarlatti.

Cannily, he tried to compensate with the dynamic and coloristic possibilities available on his own Wittmayer concert instrument, equipped with two manuals, five pedals and accessory stops at each side of the keyboard.

Additionally, his genial introductions from the stage before two pieces proved endearing, especially his action-by-action account of Couperin’s satirical “Les fastes de la grande et ancienne Mxnxstrxndxsx.”

Still, there was no getting around those unaccountably substandard, recurring problems.

Even so, Hamilton--an audience favorite in his sixth season with the series--was drawn back by applause for two encores. He delivered another of Scarlatti’s E-minor sonatas and Purcell’s Ground in C minor. His playing in these pieces revealed a greater ease and character.

Oboist Donald Leake, by occupation a professor of surgery at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, studied music as an undergraduate and graduate student at USC, winning first prize in oboe and chamber music at the Belgium Royal Conservatory in Brussels in 1956. He later played in the Carmel Bach Festival and for four years, including this one, in the Corona del Mar festival.

He and his wife commissioned the Oboe Concerto by Robert Linn he played last Sunday in the opening concert of the series.

But he is no professional virtuoso of the instrument. He commands a sweet, mellow, steady tone, but does not illuminate the music. It was also hard to escape wondering how much Hamilton and bassoonist William Wood were buttressing his efforts, especially in Handel’s Trio in F.

Not that Wood demonstrated a very strong profile in his own solo opportunity, the Sonata in C minor by Boismortier. He played securely but cautiously, with pale, chalky tone and indifferent phrasing.

In short, a rather disappointing evening.