Tag Archives: David Wilson

NC Baroque’s A Musical Offering Merits Enthusiastic Acceptance

May 4, 2026Classical, ConcertBarbara Krumdieck, David Wilson, Francis Yun, Jeanne Johnson, Sung Leeperryt77

Review: A Musical Offering @ Davidson Bach Festival

By Perry Tannenbaum

March 7, 2026, Charlotte, NC – Since I hadn’t reviewed a North Carolina Baroque Orchestra performance at Davidson College Presbyterian Church in over 10 years, you are welcome to conclude that my return trip this past weekend was also my first sampling of the Davidson Bach Festival, which launched its first season slightly less than a year ago. In some respects – age, size, duration, number of venues, and variety – the Davidson fest is like the Charlotte Bach Festival in miniature. They don’t import a world-class chorus or perform the mighty masses and oratorios, and they don’t offer noonday lecture concerts with choir, orchestra, AV presentations, and scholarly erudition.

Yet there are aspects of this relative simplicity that can be prized. Unlike the Charlotte fest or the Oregon Bach Festival, its regal template, Davidson hasn’t ventured beyond Bach so far. Nor has it hopscotched around the city or the college campus, cleaving exclusively to the Presbyterian. Upon reacquainting myself with that sanctuary, I found what many would consider an advantage. Although the organ at St. Peter’s Episcopal, in uptown Charlotte, can speak in earthshaking thunder, an organist performing a concert for over an hour at Davidson Presbyterian can be viewed far more comfortably. You have to turn around in your pew to even glimpse the organ and the organist at St. Peter’s. Even then, you’ll only see his back, often at a greater distance, and always in dimmer light.

That was my only pang of regret when I opened the festival program and recalled that the “Bach Birthday Bash” with award-winning organist Chase Loomer was scheduled for the following afternoon. Meanwhile, “A Musical Offering,” with three Bach concertos (culminating in a Brandenburg) and a Trio Sonata from his Musikalisches Opfer, would provide ample consolation for missing tomorrow’s rumble. Playing lead oboe or flute on three of the four pieces, Sung Lee was certainly going to draw the most scrutiny.

On the other hand, harpsichordist Francis Yun seemed destined to lurk inconspicuously behind the other musicians until the opening movement of the treasurable Brandenburg Concerto No. 5. Unless you were already with the epic harpsichord cadenza in the opening Allegro, you had little idea how emphatically Yun would emerge.

The same can be said, of course, for the myriad Bach compositions known to us chiefly by their featured instruments and BWV numbers. Familiar melodies lurk in them that multitudes of music lovers will instantly remember, but only specialist musicians and musicologists can anticipate. For most of us, Bach’s delicious Easter eggs are only further scrambled by the multiple times he might repurpose his best melodies in various compositions.

The Concerto for Oboe and Violin in C minor, BWV 1060r, starting off BC Bach’s “Musical Offering,” is an apt example. Starting out as a concerto for two harpsichords and strings, it was recast into a Violin and Oboe version. Either way, there were sighs of satisfaction – and relaxation – when the melody of the opening Allegro was recognized with its delightful echo motif. Lee was partnered with violinist Jeanne Johnson for the main instrumental interplay, perhaps even more beautifully in the middle Adagio movement, because it sounded less familiar, with a more minor-key flavor. As one becomes more experienced as a listener, one appreciates the variety of Allegro that sensitive and discerning soloists bring to the stage. The closing Allegro here was brisker than the earlier one.

Even if you were sitting in the second row, as we were, the hall was part of the sound, softening it. Yet the second piece, the Trio from A Musical Offering, was more subdued in various ways. The ensemble was reduced by half to four players, and all were seated in a chamber music style. Compared with recent recordings we might sample on Spotify or Apple Classical, NC Baroque’s chamber ensemble played the second movement Allegro conspicuously slower after a perfectly judged Largo with gorgeous counterpoint.

Lee, Yun, violinist David Wilson, and cellist Barbara Krumdieck meshed beautifully throughout, rightly reveling in the sonority of the penultimate Andante, which is always slowed down – even on the Kujiken brothers’1994 recording, the best of the bunch. Less of an outlier than the earlier Allegro, the concluding movement was also a bit lethargic, better propelled by Krumdieck’s continuo. Overall, the interpretation aligned best with the 1974 recording by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, where the middle movements are marked Allegro Moderato and Andante Larghetto.

Everything about the E Major Violin Concerto No. 2 sounded wonderfully familiar to me, even the slow movement. Bach lovers could have come to the catchy melodies through this BWV 1042 violin version, almost perfectly judged at Davidson Presbyterian by soloist Janelle Davis, or a subsequent BWV 1054 harpsichord version, pitched a full step lower. Davis was very close to the speed that unlocks the opening Allegro’s full flair and immersed herself lyrically in the middle Adagio. But it was Davis’s joyful playing in the closing Allegro assai that made this Concerto such a tough act to follow.

In hindsight, Davis’s joyous tempo provided the perfect launching pad for Yun’s prodigious three-minute rampage, climaxing the opening Allegro of the Brandenburg 5. Tempo-wise, the whole movement was perfectly grooved. A little more ardor from Lee in the middle Affetuoso would not have been amiss, but we ascended to a far loftier plane when Bach’s harmonies flooded the music. Though a little less prayerful and sublime than the opening Allegro, the final movement of this immortal concerto – especially appealing with Lee sparkling jubilantly – is no less quintessentially Bach and baroque. Every time we recall these bookended gems, we realize that they’re living inside us all the time.

Major and Minor Keys and Composers Besprinkle NC Baroque’s “Les fontaines de Versailles”

**Review: Les fontaines de Versailles – Music @ St. Alban’s**

By Perry Tannenbaum

2021~NC Baroque-01

Yet another classical music ensemble, the North Carolina Baroque Orchestra, has joyfully returned to the stage and the thrill of live performance. Led by Frances Blaker, who also presided as emcee and took a turn as a recorder soloist, the authentic-instrument players assembled at Sharon Presbyterian Church, which has happily returned to hosting and sponsoring concerts in their sanctuary. The title of the concert, “Les fontaines de Versailles,” deftly signaled that the baroque offerings would not be limited to works by the usual German and Italian suspects. Aside from pieces by Handel, Telemann, Vivaldi and Albinoni, we heard music by Michel-Richard de Lalande, André Campra, Johann Fasch, Michel Corrette, and Jean-Philippe Rameau. Lalande’s Les fontaines de Versailles wasn’t the pièce de resistance of the evening, but it certainly keynoted the multiple infusions of Gallic flavor into the program.

2021~NC Baroque-14 Georg Friedrich Handel’s “Overture to Alessandro” was likely the most familiar composition on a warhorse-free playlist, so there were multiple reasons for us sitting in the Sharon Presbyterian pews to experience frissons of pleasure. We could be surprised by the unexpected familiarity of the music or by how wonderful a live baroque orchestra sounded in a sanctuary after more than a year-and-a-half of being deprived of the satisfaction. This place was what this kind of music was for, though the complete Alessandro was a somewhat comical opera of royal intrigue with Alexander the Great in the middle of a romantic triangle. Violins were at the center of the gorgeous orchestral texture at the start of the Overture, its stately gait blooming emphatically and effortlessly throughout the hall. Tempos sped up and slowed with an ebb and flow that suggested the full opera in miniature – responses by the wind instruments growing boldest in the swift episode before the music settled into its ultimate repose. 2021~NC Baroque-02

Lalande’s little gem, with grand treble harmonies from trilling winds over dancing strings in 3/4 meter, was actually nestled between two multi-movement concertos by Georg Philipp Telemann and Antonio Vivaldi. Each of these concertos, in turn, featured multiple soloists. In Telemann’s E Minor Concerto for Recorder and Flute, TWV 52:e1, Blaker teamed with flutist Kathleen Kraft on the first two movements of the four-movement work. The opening Largo had a more balanced interplay between the soloists, with exquisitely intertwined melodies and harmonies, but Kraft was clearly at the forefront in the ensuing Allegro, delightfully fleet in her playing with Blaker surfacing most deliciously when her recorder blended with the virtuosic flute.

Vivaldi’s D Major Concerto for two violins and two cellos, RV 564, was presented in its entirety, two Allegro movements separated by a shorter Largo. Blaker added some engaging showmanship by calling upon a different pair of violinists for each movement, thereby showcasing most of the section. Tom Lajoie and concertmaster Martie Perry, playing the violin solos in the brisk opening movement, with churning violins and foreboding cellos behind them, proved to be a tough act to follow. The Largo, pairing violinists David Wilson and Janelle Davis, reminded me of Vivaldi’s most familiar Mandolin Concerto, and the closing Allegro brought us spirited exchanges between Annie Loud and Steph Zimmerman – with cellists Alexa Hanes-Pilon and Lisa Liske making their most distinctive contributions.

After a halved intermission that Blaker proclaimed would be seven-and-a-half minutes, NC Baroque demonstrated that multi-movement pieces would not be devoted exclusively to famous composers. Gleaned from Campra’s three-act comédie-lyrique of 1699, Le Carnaval de Venise, the ensemble played four instrumental excerpts, shuttling between slow and fast. The Ouverture began as a stately processional before the winds began mimicking the accelerated strings in canonical fashion, gliding into a dignified slowdown. Two “Airs pour les Arts” followed, the second noticeably swifter than the first, and then a “Marche de la Fortune” for the Followers of Fortune, achingly slow and mesmerizing. Two passe-pieds offered joyous compensation for this lull, closing out this charming sampler, both of them very sprightly, bringing smiles to those faces that weren’t masked. 2021~NC Baroque-10

Looking forward to the oncoming classical period, Fasch’s Allegro, from his three-movement Concerto Grosso in D minor, FaWV L:d7, was the pleasant little departure that Blaker promised, retaining many baroque traits with its woodwind filigree, yet more homophonic in its string textures. At times, the wind voicings sounded almost brassy. In the French segment that followed, Blaker and the orchestra began with the “Rondeau – Danse exécutée par les sauvages” from Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes and moved smoothly into Corrette’s “Carillon des Mortes.” Compared with the most outré moments of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, Rameau’s Danse was not savage at all, rather formal, and the alternate title, “Danse du Grand Calumet de la Paix,” is more accurately descriptive of this Rondeau, which was nearly as familiar to me as the Handel selection. Similarly, the back and forth of flutes in the Corrette composition was rather blandly descriptive compared to more percussive evocations of bells by modern composers. All in all, there was an amusing quaintness and restraint to these paired programmatic ventures.

Albinoni’s Sinfonia in G minor for two flutes, two oboes, bassoon and strings, Si 7, was a great way to conclude this concert, though I wondered why the wind soloists didn’t come downstage as Blaker and Kraft had done. On an I Solisti Veneti compilation of 12 concertos and three Sinfonias, conducted by Claudio Scimone, this G minor also concludes that program, so its appeal is far from subtle – which was likely why we heard much of the finest playing of the night in these three delectable movements, the whole of this petite symphony. Liveliness was apparent in the first notes of the Allegro, featuring some choice exchanges between bassoonists Chuck Wines and Hanes-Pilon, who abandoned her cello here. Flutes separated themselves melodiously from the full ensemble in the ensuing Larghetto e sempre piano, offered up in beguiling 3/4 time. We finished with what sounded like the fastest Allegro of the night, with especially dazzling ensemble bowing from the violins. This was not only a joyous return for NC Baroque, it was also a reaffirmation that Charlotte, with a return of our Bach Festival looming in 2022, is a hotbed for this music.

Originally published on 11/12 at CVNC.org