Beyond Baroque

With all due respect to Bach, Handel and Telemann, whose timeless and inspiring works were nicely played during the New West Symphony’s “Basically Baroque” program last weekend, the most memorable music went beyond baroque basics. The long and satisfying evening closed with the Concerto for Flute and Harp by Mozart, a prodigious upstart who arrived on the scene as the baroque period was fading.

Closer to home, Ventura-based composer John Biggs premiered his new Cello Concerto, and its relationship to baroque music was marginal, at best. In the past, the composer has proven himself able and willing to co-opt historical models from pre-modern epochs, as with his “Variations on a Theme by Rameau” and his name-that-tune orchestral sampler, “Pastiche.”

This time out, though, Biggs is clearly of this century, a few hints of Renaissance phrasings notwithstanding.

In general, Biggs can be counted on to supply sturdy writing, and though he shows a reverence for tradition, is capable of surprises. The Cello Concerto, played with flourish by Ojai-based cellist Virginia Kron, proceeds with a restless heart and a sense of idiom. It is a modernist essay, tense yet engaging.

Almost straight out of the starting gate, its contemporary identity emerges. A recurring theme played by the ensemble, later answered by cello, has a quirky harmonic turn that might have come out of John Adams’ bag.

Cello lines bob and weave over enigmatic harmonic terrain, in search of a center that never arrives. In the second movement, antsy energy and Stravinsky-ish touches yield to lyricism.

A probing intensity resumes with the concerto’s final movement, climaxing with a series of chromatic cello sweeps and an unexpected final seventh tone from the horn. We’re left hanging, that expectant last note ringing in our cocked heads.

An air of poignancy surrounded the piece, especially the second movement, which was the section performed for symphony patron and Ojai winery owner Carmen Maitland just before she succumbed to brain cancer two months ago. The concert was dedicated to her memory.

A small string ensemble gathered around the slightly amplified harpsichord, played by Patricia Mabee, to etch the contrapuntal wonders of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3.

Marcia Dickstein handled the soloist chores of Handel’s Concerto for Harp in B-flat, Opus 4, No. 6, and later joined flutist Paul Fried for the Mozart, articulating its profound lightness and grace. Fried also played masterfully on the high-minded, neatly crafted dance music of Telemann’s Suite in A minor for Flute and Strings.

Basically, this was a fine evening of music, whatever the looseness of its advertised theme. The New West, not yet a year and a half old, is a young entity that continues to impress.

Baroque Maneuvers: In other local orchestral news, the Ventura Chamber Orchestra is kicking off its scaled-down season with a concert under the heading of “A Feast of Concerti,” on Saturday at Ventura College Theater. The orchestra, founded in 1993 and led by Burns Taft, has operated on a humble level so far, but has nonetheless filled an important niche in music circles here.

In a case of resourceful rethinking, the orchestra and its organizational forces became the nucleus of the now annual Ventura Chamber Music Festival, which convenes for the third time this May.

Saturday’s orchestra program includes concerti mostly from the baroque era (baroque being a popular period this time of year), by Bach, Albonini and Telemann, in addition to Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nacthmusik.”

* The Ventura Chamber Orchestra will perform at 8 p.m. Saturday at Ventura College Theater, 4667 Telegraph Road, Ventura. Tickets are $18-$28; 648-3146.

Highs and Lows: Tuba and flute are rare bedfellows, which is a point of distinction with the duo known as Double Play, performing Sunday at Oak Grove School in Ojai. Unlikely as the pairing may seem, tuba player Patrick Sciannella and flutist Amy Ridings turn it into a complete, logical and sometimes goofy package. They cover the high and low of it.

Although Sciannella is blind, he has developed his skills enough to serve as a regular member of the Phoenix Symphony, in addition to his work with Ridings, who is also principal flutist with the Detroit Woodwind Quintet.

Expect the eclectic and the family suitable: They have no qualms about jumping from a transcription of a Bach two-part invention to “Dueling Banjos,” or from “It’s a Small World” to “Flight of the Bumble Bee.” It’s a small musical world, after all.

* Double Play will perform at 3 p.m. Sunday at Oak Grove School Pavilion, 220 W. Lomita Road, Ojai. Tickets are $6, adults and $4, children; 646-8236.