BRATTLEBORO-For Baroque music, the Wolf Kahn & Emily Mason Gallery - the main gallery of the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center (BMAC) - fits the bill for Jesse Lepkoff.
"The acoustics are perfect for the delicate and subtle sound of these 18th-century instruments," the director of Ensemble Amphion Baroque says. "They allow the nuance and the resonance of the music to just soar."
Lepkoff, of Marlboro, will bring his ensemble to that venue for the second year in a row on Saturday, Oct. 25.
He adds that the gallery is "very baroque, in a way, with its open space and the stone walls and floors. I like the feel of the place. I like the setup. There's a natural little stage. And they put up a wooden platform to extend it a bit."
Being surrounded by art in such an "airy space" adds to the experience, he said.
Saturday's concert, "Grace and Grandeur: Masterpieces of French and German Chamber Music," features Baroque flutes and recorders, Baroque oboe, viola da gamba, and harpsichord.
The Germans "were very into contrapuntal music," he says. "The strictness of a fugue with the many voices interconnecting had a certain austerity to it. Not that it can't be passionate as well."
German music combined elements of French music and Italian music into what the musicians there called "the mixed style."
"The best of both worlds is what the Germans took pride in," Lepkoff explains.
Reflecting on the appeal of the program's music, Lepkoff says that "it's from a time before technology; it reflects the natural world" as well as the society that spawned it.
"The world was a very different place. You know, there's a courtliness to a lot of the music, because a lot was associated with royalty: That's where Baroque music was supported. The best musicians were employed by the court and the church."
While the music depicts beauty, there was beauty in the period's architecture, too, and in the court and in the natural world. "All that was more prevalent," he says.
It's the natural world that draws Lepkoff: "When I think of what's being reflected in the music, my mind goes to nature," he says.
"And, of course, there's the emotional element. Baroque music was much more concerned with the emotions than what came before," Lepkoff adds.
The German part of the program offers "a representation of a later style of Baroque music - Rococo or the Gallant style" from "the court of Frederick the Great in Berlin, which became one of the main centers for 18th-century music," he says.
Such music is in the Sensitive Style, Lepkoff says, in which such emotions were manifest in sudden contrasts in a piece's mood.
"It was a whole other school of playing: It was pre-classical, and it anticipated what came next with Haydn and Mozart," he adds.
Sensitive Style (Empfindsamer Stil) is represented in the program's Quartet No. 10 in G major by Johann Gottlieb Janitsch (1708–1762).
Also on the program is Quatuor in D minor, Tafelmusik II by Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767). Telemann, who Lepkoff describes as "one of the most cosmopolitan of composers," drew not only from French, Italian, and German music, but also from music of Poland, where the Magdeburg-born composer and multi-instrumentalist had travelled.
In 17th-century France, the main composer, says Lepkoff, was Jean-Baptiste Lully.
"That was a very French style," he says. It had its own thing going on. But when the French heard the works of Italian composer Arcangelo Corelli - the most famous of his pieces came out right at the dawn of the 18th century - it created a stir all over Europe."
Corelli, in turn, influenced French composer François Couperin (1668–1733), whose collection of pieces, Les Nations, was composed as a representation of leading nations of the time. "La Françoises," from that collection, will be heard Saturday.
"I designed the program to have different colors, using the different players that play different instruments. So we mixed and matched," Lepkoff explains, "and came up with a lot of variety."
Other composers of music in the performance are Marin Marais (1656–1728), François Dieupart (1676–1751), Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764), Joseph Bodin De Boismortier (1689–1755), Louis-Antoine Dornel (1680–1757), and Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer (1703–1755).
"There are four major quartets and, in between, are other smaller combinations of things," Lepkoff says.
Old friends
Lepkoff, known locally for his Thrush Hill Stage music series and for his bossa nova and blues work, has deep roots and expertise in Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque music.
A prolific player of Baroque flute and recorder, Lepkoff "received his graduate education at the Royal Conservatory in the Netherlands with Baroque flutist Wilbert Hazelzet," according to background materials for the event.
In addition to appearing at major festivals around the world, he performs and records regularly with the Boston Camerata and, since 1984, has toured with them in 14 countries. Lepkoff has recorded for American and European radio and record labels.
Lepkoff will be joined by Marina Minkin, harpsichord; Carol Lewis, viola da gamba; Na'ama Lion, Baroque flute; and Owen Watkins, Baroque oboe and recorder.
Among them they've played solo and with Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque music ensembles from Boston to Jerusalem. They hold doctorates and other advanced degrees and teaching positions at prestigious institutions such as Longy School of Music and the New England Conservatory. They've toured nationally and internationally and recorded with a host of ensembles (Hespèrion, Boston Camerata, Ensemble Chaconne, and Capriccio Stravagante, the Handel and Haydn Society, Mediterranean Baroque Quartet, among many others), and for a range of labels from Deutsche Harmonia to New World Records.
These are old friends of Lepkoff's.
"I met Na'ama, for instance, in Europe at conservatory, and we played there together 35 years ago," he says. "We recently got back together because she'd moved to Boston: We were always saying, 'Hey, we have to play together,' and it finally happened this year."
He met Minkin through Lion. "They're both from Israel," he says. "And Owen, I knew from Camerata - ages ago, you know, in '93 or something. And Carol I met before I was in Camerata through a friend at conservatory; she had been studying in [Switzerland], and came back."
The program that will be presented Saturday was first heard in July at Pikes Falls Chamber Music Festival in Jamaica. This will be its second performance.
"Aficionados of Baroque music are all around," Lepkoff observes. "I hope that people who appreciate this music will see this as a unique opportunity to hear Baroque music on original instruments in a space that really works for the instruments and for the pieces."
Ensemble Amphion Baroque performs Saturday, Oct. 25, at 7 p.m. at BMAC, 19 Vernon St., Brattleboro. Tickets are $25 through the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center and Eventbrite. For more information, call 802-579-5943.
This Arts item by Annie Landenberger was written for The Commons.