Sunday afternoon was to belong to Nigel North, the virtuoso lutenist who honors with his presence both the concert world and the Jacobs School faculty. Reportedly, he suffered a back injury the day before and had to cancel his recital in St. Thomas Lutheran Church.
In his place, BLEMF called upon pianist Mike Cheng-Yu Lee who, on Saturday, had helped celebrate the late faculty pianist Edmund Battersby. As partner with Hsuan Chang Kitano, Lee had stunned an audience, certainly me, playing “Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos,” K.448. That performance was a tour de force.
His Sunday appearance was a lecture/music combine about “Mozart and His Piano.” Its climax was Lee’s reading of Mozart’s “Sonata in F,” K.332, on fortepiano, an absolutely gorgeous performance that stressed the work’s lyricism, an element strongly suggestive of the Romantic period soon to come.
As keyboard performer, Lee really is a major talent, no doubt about it; I expect press notices to start coming before long in praise of his musicianship. As Nigel North’s substitute, he was a giving soul to be thanked for his generosity. As lecturer, however, though he knows his stuff, he should have been told that a microphone helps get the message out clearly and that back-and-forth physical movement should be limited because constant and purposeless pacing also gets in the way of successful communication. Call that advice for the future.

The seven musicians in Opera Nova used their performance to sharpen details for a forthcoming debut at the prestigious West Coast version of BLEMF, the Berkeley Early Music Festival. So, they’ve gained a foothold in the profession, and the manner in which they took us, their Sunday audience, on “A Musical Tour of 17th Century Italian Cities and Courts” served as proof that they’re on the right path.
The performance at the First Presbyterian Church amounted to a colorful tapestry of tunes, sonatas and canzones, songs rich in melodies that folks would hear informally on streets and, more formally, at inside gatherings of various persuasions. The composers are not so well-known now, but reveal in these 17th-century pieces a gift for attracting audiences: the Venetians Dario Castello and Biagio Marini, the Assisi-born Giovanni Battista Buonamente, from Ferrara, the keyboard virtuoso Girolamo Frescobaldi, Cremona’s Tarquinio Merula and Verona’s Antonio Bertali, along with Marco Antonio Ferro, birthplace a question mark.
Their music varied at least slightly, one from the others, but in sum evoked the land and people and era in festive manner. For base and body, Opera Nova has harpsichordist Dawn Kalis, violist da gamba Sarah Lodico and lutenist Everett Redburn, each a significant contributor to the instrumental weave. As featured and terrific soloists, the ensemble starred violinists Reynaldo Patino and Martie Perry, sackbut artist (trombone) Caleb Ketcham and, on dulcian (bassoon), Charles Wines. They embraced the music, energetically making it their own. As such, they are fun to watch and hear.