Famous Bach and relative unknowns

The Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra opened its fourth season under its music director, Martin Haselbock, at Zipper Hall on Saturday night in fine shape, juxtaposing a clutch of famous baroque-era composers with two lesser-known ones.

The unwary reader of Musica Angelica’s season brochure might have thought that the listing of Orchestral Suite No. 4 in D by J.B. Bach contained an unfortunate typo. But no, this wasn’t the familiar Suite No. 4 -- also in D -- by good old Johann Sebastian Bach. It turns out that there was a J.B. Bach -- Johann Bernhard Bach (1676-1749) -- an older cousin of Johann Sebastian who also happened to write four orchestral suites.

Yet J.B.’s Suite No. 4 is not likely to take its place beside J.S.’s in the basic repertoire any time soon. It’s a pleasant, tuneful series of dances in a lighter style closer to those of Telemann or the French baroque, with little of the contrapuntal adventure of his cousin. Mostly, this rarity reminded us of the vast reach of the Bach family cartel, whose collective output will keep our baroque- era researchers busy for decades.

However, the other little-known composer on the program, Johann Gottlieb Graun, was represented by a more substantial piece, a Double Concerto for viola da gamba and violin -- a U.S. premiere. The concerto’s outer movements convey a sense of vigorous, rustic darkness with a slight Italian influence, while the soloists trade off sad songs in the slow movement.

Graun’s canons and call-and-response exchanges were treated to virtuosic teamwork from Vittorio Ghielmi on viola da gamba and concertmaster Ilia Korol.

Marion Verbruggen, long a star in the period-performance world, displayed rapid-fire virtuosity and precision on the tiny, piping sopranino recorder in Vivaldi’s Concerto for recorder and strings in C.

Later, she combined forces with Ghielmi in Telemann’s Double Concerto for gamba and recorder in A minor. Verbruggen was also one of the high-powered performers on alto recorder -- the other being Rotem Gilbert -- in J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 4, with the opening movement taken at a blindingly fast tempo (which didn’t faze soloist Korol a bit) and the finale dancing cheerfully at a relaxed pace.

Zipper Hall remains an excellent room for period instruments -- tempering their rasping timbres and projecting them clearly to every seat -- and in the Brandenburg finale, one could even detect a quality not often associat- ed with period ensembles: warmth.

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