Music could be played this way, that it could be hurled out into the audience like a boomerang, and bring that audience back into its ambience.

- Piers Anthony, "Blue Adept"

Much ado can be made of the lack of decent, coherent performance of Baroque repertoire in Singapore: certainly in the entirety of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra's current season, only two works are by composers born before 1700: Vivaldi's D major Guitar Concerto and Handel's Messiah. (Double that to four, if you count the two Bachs in the All About Symphony educational concert.)

Not a well-balanced diet by any stretch of the definition. Therefore, when a concert entitled Johann Sebastian Bach and His Contemporaries comes along, it becomes quite an event in the local classical circuit. The fact that it is given by period specialists, Musica Antiqua Köln, is doubly a bonus. I should point out, though, that the Musica Antiqua Köln should not be confused with the Concerto Köln, another period bunch who were last here in 1998.

With minimal direction from the first chair, sometimes with his bow and at others with movements of the upper body, leader Reinhard Goebel had clearly done all his groundwork with his musicians in rehearsal. The Heinichen Overture which kicked off the concert was not too far off what the audience had come to expect: rhythms were (to use a cliché) "sharply pointed" and "well sprung", tempi was taut if fairly conservative, and the overall approach was, well, typically muscular and Germanic.

While there was an idiomatic polarity in the mix of different styles found in the various Airs, Rigaudon and Boureeée movements of the Heinichen, I could not help a niggling suspicion that these didactic mannerisms were going to be the common approach for everything else to follow. The playing was also marred by the occasional flubbed note - hardly the crack precision team which reviews had made them out to be. Rather, credit the musicians for striving more to play together as an ensemble, if at the expense of individual flair when each instrument had the opportunity to shine.

Telemann's Concerto - one of over 400 overtures and concertos of variable (if not dubious) flummery - confirmed this. The opening exchanges between the double oboes and bassoon, and later dialogue between woodwinds and strings, were characteristically bucolic, even quaintly charming. What did not work was the metronomically rigid approach, which tended to push speeds into a narrow middle band: slow movements became quicker, and fast movements didn't push past second gear, hovering more or less around a certain tempo.

Within the boxy confines of the Victoria Concert Hall, the full body of the group was given a warm, rich acoustic - we've mentioned before that this is what an excellent venue for chamber music - but as a group, individual timbres in the the woodwinds and low strings were unkindly smothered out, resulting in a plasticine of massed sound.

Johann Sebastian Bach's Fourteen Canons after the Eight Ground-notes of the Goldberg Variations was for me the big highlight of the evening. (This, of course, brings the number of Goldberg Variations to, strictly speaking, forty-four: thirty in the original variations for keyboard, of which every third variation was also a canon, and the fourteen here.) The Canons, discovered in Strasbourg on the last page of Bach's own printed copy of the Goldbergs, is also notable as the last of the three big sets of canons produced by Bach, the first two being The Musical Offering and Art of Fugue.

Harpsichordist Léon Berben began with the Aria from the Goldberg Variations, gradually eliminating the right-hand voice and slowing the tempi down, finally simplifying the left-hand to just the eight opening ground-notes of the Aria; sort of an aural colander to cue the audience into the first of the canons. An interesting idea indeed, even if Berben sounded quite uncomfortable in his solo turn (but in all fairness, I don't think anyone expected him to channel Perahia, Hewitt or Gould, either.)

But epistolatory revelations of Bach followed. The first canon, with Reinhard Goebel on violin and Berben on harpsichord, was performed with spontaneous tempi, almost like an exploratory reading of the music. Each of the canons to follow was given its own character (much like the thirty keyboard variations) and full marks to the Musica Antiqua Köln for their plangent reading of each canon. Despite the rigidity of Bach's compositional technique, they infused each portion expertly with atmosphere and drama, culminating with the solo harpsichord reprising the eight ground-notes again, to bring closure to the work. After the stodgy diet of Heinichen and Telemann, Bach was like a fresh summer breeze.

As a quick treat before the break, the ensemble presented a Rondo for piccolo violin in concertante style by Johann Joseph Fux, with violinist Stephan Schardt taking the key role. Not that it came with any fresh ideas, though: the music-making was simply as robust as ever, with some degree of portamento from the soloist. Otherwise, an account in full unanimity with Heinichen and Telemann.

There was the usual corporate junket at the intermission, which ended up going a bit longer than planned, because guests were oblivious to the three bells and were tardy returning from the reception. The musicians were already onstage and waiting as the crowd streamed back in (not for the first time). The music begun even as the last of the guests took their seats; that of Bohemian-born Jan Dismas Zelenka, a one-time student of Johann Joseph Fux. His curiously-titled Hypocondrie has given rise to some speculation about its purpose. As musicologist Wolfgang Horn has postulated:

The suggestive title may inspire thought experiment as to the possible >>meaning<< of instrumental music. Does knowledge of title influence our approach to the music ? Would we listen to it or play it differently if the title were lacking ? Would we miss the title at all ?

As a non-Germanic piece, the Hypocondrie was unusual in that it contained the French baroque influence, not just in its title but also in its musical structure. (For the curious, an extended introduction in duple time of twenty-four measures, a fugal section in triple time, and a concluding section in duple time marked Lentement.) Not that it really affected the Musica's approach, with the usual cut-and-thrust between various instruments at moderate pace.

The concluding Telemann Septet (with obbligato parts and basso continuo, totalling all ten musicians) was also French in character. The usual double-dotted idiom, rhythmic bounce and energy levels were all there, but interpretatively Goebel and his band really didn't throw down much of a gauntlet: it was simply churned out with the usual Teutonisms. Can too much of a good thing make it bad ?

Still, the audience applauded the musicians long enough for them to return with an encore - no less, the delightful Sinfonia from Bach's Cantata No.42, BWV 42, Am Abend aber desselbigen Sabbats. Curiously, Reinhard Goebel was somehow mistakenly identified the work in his introduction as the prelude for one of Bach's secular cantatas.

(Or perhaps not. When he introduced the work as the Sinfonia from Cantata No.42, my first reactive thought was also straight to one of Bach's handful of non-religious dramma per musicas. And that's probably because in Goebel's own programme notes, he does quote a line from Bach's dramatic cantata Der Streit zwischen Phoebus und Pan. It's frightening how quickly one's thought processes can emerge.)

Again, it was evident that Johann Sebastian Bach's contribution to the baroque repertoire was superior to that of his contemporaries. Not that the Musica Antiqua Köln were less than compelling on the night, but for all their effervesence and authority, it was more of being overfed with too much of a muchness at one sitting.

Photo of Reinhard Goebel and the ensemble was obtained from the Musica Antiqua Köln website and the Deutsche Grammaphon website.

BENJAMIN CHEE favourite literary genre is science fiction.

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