Musica Angelica in good humor

Classical music goes for the jocular vein in “La Serva Padrona and Assorted Other Amusements,” a chamber-concert diversion to be presented by Southern California’s noted Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra on Saturday at Pasadena Presbyterian Church and Sunday at All Saints Church in Beverly Hills.

“We haven’t really done a funny program for quite some time,” says violinist Elizabeth Blumenstock, the orchestra’s resident artistic director. “It’s been really fun to plan -- I’ve been getting more and more tickled about it.”

The semi-staged “La Serva Padrona,” Pergolesi’s 18th century comic operetta about a wily maid who tricks her employer into marriage, will feature soprano Christine Brandes and baritone Nathaniel Watson. It’s being directed by Nancy Keystone, founder and artistic director of Critical Mass Performance Group.

In Carlo Farina’s 17th century musical olio “Capriccio Stravagante,” also on the bill, string instruments do impressions of drums, guitars, dogs, chickens and angry cats.

“It speaks very strongly to the higher nature and the higher calling of the violin,” Blumenstock deadpans.

A “wonderful little duo” from Telemann’s “Gulliver Suite” -- pieces inspired by Jonathan Swift’s satiric classic “Gulliver’s Travels” -- “are visually funny as well as cute to listen to,” she says. She plans to pass out samples of the music to show the tiny 128th notes used in “Chaconne of the Lilliputians” and the big double whole notes that denote Swift’s land of giants in the “Gigue of the Brobdingnagians.”

The concert’s “truly hysterical” finale will be “Sonata for Viola, Four Hands and Harpsichord,” by composer Peter Schickele’s madcap alter ego, PDQ Bach, “a neglected member of that illustrious family,” Blumenstock jokes. “He was very creative, using carpentry tools and fishing equipment.”

It all adds up to a user-friendly introduction to Baroque music, she says. “You get a great sort of panorama of some of the major forms of the Baroque with nothing serious to hold you back from just plain old enjoying it.”

-- Lynne Heffley