Review: Texas Camerata with baritone David Grogan

The vaulted interior of Fort Worth’s St. Andrews Episcopal Church was an exceptionally well-suited venue for a concert of Baroque music performed by the Texas Camerata. The group plays on historically accurate instruments of the era so the music sounds pretty much like it would have 300 years ago in what probably was a similar venue.

For listeners more accustomed to modern instruments, the string instruments look similar but sounded richer and more muted. The flute looks like a wooden version of the modern silver instrument, but sounds more like a recorder. The trumpet is quite different, in that it is elongated, and the mellow sound is nowhere near as, shall we say, forthright as a modern version.

At one point, cellist Karen Hall switched to a gamba, which is a cross between a cello and a guitar. The excellent harpsichordist, Robert August, played throughout the program. (Players gave a short, but informative, introduction to their instruments.) Violinist and musical director Kristin Van Cleve led the group with skill.

The guest artist was baritone David Grogan, whose gloriously resonant voice needs little introduction to local concertgoers. He teaches at the University of Texas at Arlington and frequently appears as soloist with numerous musical organizations.

Grogan sang a wide range of Baroque music from the earliest, a piece by Heinrich Schütz that dates from 1660, to a ripsnorter showpiece from George Frideric Handel’s oratorio, Joshua, “See the raging flames arise.” Joshua premiered in 1747, which is the dawning of the classical era. (Mozart was born in 1756.)

Singing with no apparent effort, Grogan easily negotiated all of the virtuosic passages, so common in music from this era, and displayed a wide vocal range. Sometimes he sounded like a bass, descending to the bottom of his range, and other times he displayed a bright and flexible baritone.

The instrumental parts of the concert were a grab bag of music by well-known composers, such as Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Philipp Telemann to the also-ran Johann Ludwig Krebs.

Presented without an intermission, it was a most satisfying concert of well-played music and warmly received by the smallish, but dedicated, audience.

This story was originally published October 19, 2015 at 10:13 PM with the headline "Review: Texas Camerata with baritone David Grogan."