With two cellos in tow, Tomkins ably bridges eras

Now a member of the Bay Area’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Tanya Tomkins has been leading a double life, performing both on Baroque and modern cellos. Chamber Music in Historic Sites has previously presented her on both instruments in separate concerts. But this time, at the Doheny Mansion on Sunday afternoon, Tomkins played each, and the contrast between them in a program of serious, challenging solo works was not subtle.

On Baroque cello -- which uses gut strings, lacks an endpin and requires a grip farther up on the bow -- Tomkins explored J.S. Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 with a probing, ruminating, often rhapsodic approach. Then, as an unexpected insert, she played a brief Prelude (finished only last week) by a young Bay Area composer Eric Zivian, a mostly quiet, angular, cryptic, fragmented piece that suggested that the Baroque cello’s light, scratchy tone might be suitable for Webern.

It is definitely not suitable for Britten’s Cello Suite No. 1, which was written explicitly for the huge, growling tone, endless technique and extravagant musical personality of one Mstislav Rostropovich. So Tomkins brought out her modern cello, generating a large enough tone to suggest the presence of Slava, displaying a good feeling for the piece’s fluctuations of tension, fearlessly confronting and conquering the technical traps.