Chatham Baroque Trio

 

Chatham Baroque:
A Trio Virtuosic
Chamber Music in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century

Andrew Fouts, violin
Patricia Halverson, viola da gamba
Scott Pauley, archlute and theorbo 

November 23, 2025
Levy Hall, Rodef Shalom, Pittsburgh PA

 

Chatham Baroque from Pittsburgh has been playing together in various formations for more than 15 years. Once a year, the ensemble performs as a trio. In this annual concert they presented music by composers from Germany, Austria and Czech-Austria:

• Johann Sebastian Bach: Sonata in G Major BWV 1021
• Dietrich Buxtehude: Trio Sonata in A Minor Op. 1 No. 3, BuxWV 254
• Carl Friedrich Abel: Sonata No. 7 in Bb Major
• Johann Heinrich Schmelzer: Sonata Quarta in D Major
• Philip Heinrich Erlebach: Sonata I in D Major
• Heinrich Ignaz Biber: Sonata III in F Major
• Georg Friedrich Händel: Trio Sonata in G Minor Op. 1 No. 6

Well-known names, except Abel and Erlebach, who I never heard of before. But they were notable discoveries. Bach or Händel go without saying, but it is always astonishing what even "second-tier" Baroque composers were capable of. It is all the more gratifying that their often long-forgotten works are not only being rediscovered, but also presented in a much more vibrant way today than we know it from the often very formally rigid Baroque music recordings of the 1950s and 1960s.

Chatham Baroque performed with great virtuosity and obvious enjoyment. It was a little bit of a pity however, that the beautiful but relatively high Levy Hall made the theorbo and viola da gamba sound somewhat lost in the room, resulting in the violin sounding very dominant. 

However, thank you for the music!