Bach and Vivaldi Outshine Mozart at Start of Fest

Mozart took a back seat to Bach and Vivaldi in Friday night’s opening concert of the Mainly Mozart Festival at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Artistic director David Atherton surrounded his Mozart trifles--a pair of single-movement Epistle Sonatas and two delicate pieces for glass harmonica--with the contrapuntal wizardry of Bach’s Sixth and Third Brandenburg Concertos and the flashy virtuosity of two Vivaldi flute concertos.

Under these circumstances, the evening belonged to the soloists. Flutist Timothy Day chose a light, silvery timbre to dispatch the rococo frills of Vivaldi’s D-major concerto (“Il Gardellino”) with apt panache. Dennis James coaxed feathery arpeggios and gossamer ornaments from a modern re-creation of the glass harmonica, that quaint Benjamin Franklin invention that only a decade ago was ubiquitously labeled extinct.

Violists Cynthia Phelps and James Dunham suggested amorous overtones in their dulcet duet that was the middle movement of the Brandenburg Sixth. Too bad the cathedral’s tubby acoustics muddied the bottom-heavy string textures in the fast outer movements of this unique concerto without violins.

Atherton’s main accomplishment on Friday--he did not conduct the smaller chamber pieces--was his spirited but well-focused direction of the Third Brandenburg Concerto. In this program-closing finale, he matched brio with elegance, and the ensemble responded with stylish aplomb.

This 11th installment of the annual festival, which runs through June 20, offers 17 performances in 10 venues, six in San Diego and Imperial counties and four in Baja California. Although Atherton’s programming rarely ventures beyond composers a generation or two away from the festival’s namesake, the British maestro will conduct Gustav Mahler’s archromantic “Das Lied von der Erde” this week in a reduced orchestration by Arnold Schoenberg. And in a concert at Tijuana’s Centro Cultural, Joaquin Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez” and Silvestre Revueltas’ “Ocho por Radio” will lend a decidedly Latin accent to the Mozart fare.

* The Mainly Mozart Festival continues through June 20. $18-$42. Information: (619) 239-0100.