Musica Viva Offers Taste of a Bygone Era

Dosso Dossi (1486?-1542), the duchy of Ferrara’s court painter, had a genius for imagery and an irreverent sense of humor second to none (he signed one painting with just a D and a bone through it; bone is “osso” in Italian). Since the Getty Museum is presenting a special Dosso exhibition through July 11, nine musicians from Musica Viva set out Saturday afternoon to complement the sights with sounds that Dosso might have heard.

With Musica Viva’s arsenal of violas da gamba, lutes, recorders and voices presumably observing current notions of period performance practice, we heard a panorama of frottolas, madrigals, dances and other musical artifacts from the Italian Renaissance. Yet, to one nonspecialist, the music often seemed to fall short of the imagination, wit and willingness to bend the rules that one can sense in Dosso’s paintings.

A few things might have been done to liven up the affair. The white, gaping expanse of a screen behind the ensemble in the Getty’s Harold M. Williams Auditorium could have been used for projections of Dosso’s paintings along with the music (indeed, one madrigal in particular, “Chi mett’il pie,” was rooted in the same epic poem, “Orlando Furioso,” that inspired Dosso’s “Melissa”). Perhaps a wry number such as Michele Pesenti’s “Che faralla, che diralla” would have connected better if it had been sung in an English translation. Perhaps the ensemble could have displayed consistently more rhythmic verve and fewer discrepancies in tuning.

However, director James Tyler did provide a solid rhythmic base on Renaissance guitar and lute in pieces such as the anonymous saltarello “Basela un tratto” and, with lutenist Nina Treadwell, in a lively Francesco da Milano Canon. Soprano Kris Gould was the most interesting and expressive of the three singers, and Musica Viva ended the program on a high note with an irresistibly accelerating performance of Giovan Domenico da Nola’s “Chi la gagliarda.”