Veracini sonatas played with appropriate vivacity

They may not be household names, but British violinist John Holloway, Dutch cellist Jaap ter Linden and Danish harpsichordist Lars Ulrik Mortensen do constitute an all-star trio in the Baroque period-performance field. Thus, they receive equal billing, although Holloway -- another of the lively scholars Britain seems to produce in bundles -- is their spokesman.

Tuesday night, the three offered a survey of Italian Baroque sonatas as part of the Da Camera Society of Mount St. Mary’s College series Chamber Music in Historic Sites. The setting was the Blossom Room of Hollywood’s Roosevelt Hotel.

The room’s acoustics are very good, but you could feel a sense of cultural disconnect watching and hearing Baroque specialists as portraits of Frank Sinatra, Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe stared at you.

The focus of the program was Francesco Maria Veracini, a Paganini-like figure from the 18th century whose music reveled in Germanic counterpoint and delightful, repetitive Italian rhetorical touches.

Holloway, Ter Linden and Mortensen recently released a CD of Veracini sonatas on ECM, and they included two of them: the Sonata in G minor and the Sonata in A. The latter’s relatively grand scale made it a natural concert closer.

There was also a Capriccio from Opus 1’s F-Major Sonata that was varied and dramatic enough to stand on its own.

Elsewhere, Ter Linden sailed easily through the sudden gusts of difficult passage work in Geminiani’s Sonata in A minor for cello and basso continuo, and Holloway offered up a Corelli Sonata in G minor for violin and harpsichord.

The unnaturally lush, full projection of Holloway’s tone on the CD can be attributed to ECM’s distinctive engineering; live, his gut-stringed violin has a much lighter, papery timbre, however agile and expressive. On his own, Mortensen played two Domenico Scarlatti keyboard sonatas with pronounced rubatos and a zesty sense of humor.

And speaking of humor, it’s hard to resist mentioning the historically informed title that Holloway affixed to this program. Are you ready? “Freaks, Macaroni and Vermin.”