Duo Calabrese Studies Tunes for a Forgotten Instrument

Duo Calabrese operates on a charming, even rebellious premise: exploring out-of-the-way repertory that features only the violin and the once flourishing, now rarely used 14-string viola d’amore. The question before the listener: Is it worth the effort?

Certainly there was a wide stylistic range among the duos and solo pieces that the husband-and-wife team of John Anthony Calabrese (viola d’amore) and Gabriela Olcese (violin) dusted off at Schoenberg Hall on Sunday afternoon. The obsessive Baroque rigor of Von Biber’s Passacaglia in G Minor, for solo viola d’amore, was sandwiched between the courtly dances of Milande’s Pieces for Viola d’Amore and Violin, and Stamitz’s classical, often rustic-flavored Sonata in D, with its delightful set of variations on the tune “Marlborough’s Going to War.”

Henri Casadesus’ Three Preludes picked up influences from Bach to Debussy, and the multiple-stopped chords in his “The Chase” revealed the full, ghostly vibrations of the viola d’amore’s resonating 14 strings. Jan Kral’s Notturno offered a modestly expressive dose of late Romanticism; Frantisek Slavik’s Intermezzo exploited unusual unison textures for the duo; and Kikuko Massumoto’s “Roei,” for solo viola d’amore, was a quietly adventurous sequence with imitations of a koto and various avant-garde effects.

Alas, as enterprising as this program was, it didn’t reveal any long-lost masterworks, and the concert’s focal point, the viola d’amore, had a delicate, wiry tone quality that simply lacks the richness and depth of the violin, viola or cello. Yet Calabrese handled his instrument with unshowy, virtuosic ease, while Olcese’s role was rather reticent through much of the program.