Dual Recital Is a Historical Pleasure

History reveled in itself Wednesday night at Cal State Long Beach, on the penultimate program of the mid-summer guitar and lute concert series. A dual recital of lutenist Ronn McFarlane and the duo of lutenist-guitarist Richard Savino and violinist Monica Huggett found the musicians playing period instruments and training their considerable musical energies largely on Baroque repertory.

A fine and subtle lutenist, McFarlane opened with Partita by David Kellner, a contemporary of Bach. The Sonata in D Minor, by the prolific composer for lute Sylvius Leopold Weiss, was handled with a clarifying expressive ease in McFarlane’s hands. Bach’s Prelude BWV 999 and Fugue BWV 1000, though imbued with feeling, were less pristine on delivery but remained refreshing fodder for ears accustomed to hearing this music in guitar arrangements.

The only real misstep--a lapse in taste--was McFarlane’s encore, the lilting “Passemeze,” by Adrian Leroy, in which the lutenist chose to toss in a teasing riff from the “Peter Gunn” theme. A more inappropriate cheap trick would be hard to imagine, given the preceding gracefulness.

When Huggett and Savino took the stage after intermission, the terrain shifted to Italian music, including the Sonata No. 4 of Marco Uccellini, and Arcangelo Corelli’s Sonata, Opus 5. No. 3 in C, a showcase for Huggett’s gifts. She is a musician in command, neatly shaping each phrase and finding the propulsion in the score.

On these works, Savino supplied a largely supportive role on lute. But he then picked up his 1815-model guitar--smaller in body and tone--for the “Sonata Concertata” of Paganini, and a more interactive dialogue arose. Here, as on Mauro Giuliani’s proto-romantic “Grand Duo Concertant,” Opus 25 in E minor, the pair swapped quips, shared sentiments and even ventured mischievous asides, all the more apparent in comparison to the formality of the Baroque music.