Raras

This year marks the 250th birthday of the Italian classical composer Luigi Boccherini, a composer all too often overshadowed by Austrian contemporaries Joseph Haydn and Mozart. Pro Musica Rara's concert yesterday at the Baltimore Museum of Art celebrated this anniversary with music by Boccherini, Michael Haydn and Johann Christian Bach (as transcribed by Mozart).Guitarist Nathaniel Gunod appeared as guest artist in two Boccherini works, a Sonata in C Major for cello, guitar and gamba, and in a Quintet in D Major for guitar and strings.

When Ludwig van Beethoven traveled to Vienna in 1792 at the age of 22 to study with Joseph Haydn, he carried with him a rather astonishing prophecy written by his patron, Count Waldstein: "You shall receive Mozart's spirit from Haydn's hand."This oft-repeated remark provided the raison d'etre for Pro Musica Rara's illuminating performance of fortepiano trios by the three composers at the Baltimore Museum of Art yesterday.Fortepianist and Pro Musica Artistic Director Shirley Mathews, violinist Cynthia Roberts and cellist Allen Whear are exemplary participants in the so-called "Early Music" movement.

Pro Musica Rara opened its 20th season at the Baltimore Museum of Art Sunday afternoon with the "Steps to Parnassus." Parnassus is the mountain in Greece associated with Apollo; unfortunately, Pro Musica Rara was not always at the peak.The collection of solo sonatas, trio sonatas, and solo suite were all masterworks, but the musical results were a little uneven.The program opened with the first of the "Mystery" sonatas of Heinrich Ignaz von Biber. Violinist Cynthia Roberts played with sensitivity and gave the music its melancholic flavor.

Way up near the top of the most inspired and profound works of classical music you'll find the suites for solo cello by Bach. With one instrument, he created whole worlds of sonic poetry. To kick off its 31st season of presenting early music on original instruments, Pro Musica Rara presents its artistic director, cellist Allen Whear, in a program containing two of Bach's cello suites, along with works by Gabrielli and Telemann. The program is 3:30 p.m. Sunday at Marikle Chapel, College of Notre Dame, 4701 N. Charles St. Tickets are $25, $20 for seniors and $10 for students.

For 25 or so of its 30 years, Pro Musica Rara has presented an annual program dubbed SuperBach Sunday, originally offered as a counterpoint to the Super Bowl. It's no longer specifically timed to that event, but the name stuck. The 2005 concert, held Sunday at the ensemble's cozy home base, Towson Presbyterian Church, and devoted to works by Bach and Handel, scored one touchdown after another. Since cellist Allen Whear, a longtime performer with Pro Musica Rara, became the organization's artistic director last season, the overall quality has strengthened considerably.

A few decades ago, when the historical authenticity movement began sweeping the music world, it was common to hear complaints about how out-of-tune or just plain out-of-sorts performances on original instruments tended to sound. Not everyone who embraced the switch to gut strings or wooden flutes or valveless trumpets was up to the challenges involved. Embracing the past could be a lot easier in spirit than in reality. But today, virtuoso early-music groups are plentiful. Many musicians have successfully made the transition from modern to ancient.

PRO MUSICA Rara will use the 220th birthday of Beethoven Sunday at the Baltimore Museum of Art to show the delicate balance of strings and piano in three trios written about the same time by the young Beethoven and the two masters he learned from, however briefly, Mozart and Haydn.The Baltimore chamber music group, now in its 16th year, plays the second concert of its five-concert season at 3:30 p.m. Sunday under Shirley Mathews, artistic director.Beethoven's Trio in E-flat (1795) was his first published work.

The best case for original instruments in yesterday's Pro Musica Rara concert at the Baltimore Museum of Art was made in its performance of Beethoven's Piano Quartet in E-flat (opus 16), which concluded the program.This work is really the Quintet for Piano and Winds in the composer's own arrangement for piano and strings. It is invariably believed thought much inferior to the original because -- compared to the version using winds -- the strings make opus 16 sound too homogenous, thus robbing it of color, and because the piano's sonority too easily swamps that of the violin, viola and cello.

Some concerts in recent seasons have made this listener regret the enthusiasm that once led him to bestow the sobriquet "Baltimore's premiere early music ensemble" upon Pro Musica Rara. But its program Sunday afternoon at the Baltimore Museum of Art rekindled my enthusiasm. The playing was alive and imaginative, while judgment and taste were consistently matched by splendid technique and control.The concert's guest artist was Timothy Day, the Baltimore Symphony's principal flute from 1976 to 1988 who is now Professor of Flute at the San Francisco Conservatory.

Music by four composers active during the 1760s and 1770s -- a time of fertile experimentation separating the fully formed masterpieces of the High Baroque and those of the Classical eras -- was the bill of fare for Pro Musica Rara's performance yesterday at the Baltimore Museum of Art.For this opening concert of its 16th season, Pro Musica's forces were augmented by the early music violin performance expert Stanley Ritchie. Mr. Ritchie led the ensemble in symphonies by William Boyce (number III in C major)