Newport Baroque

Providence Journal, March 2003

Vivaldi, Bach, Handel find a venue and receptive ear
BYLINE: JENNY HOLLAND
DATE: 03-12-2003
PUBLICATION: Providence Journal Company

The Newport Baroque Orchestra performs its first concert before a full house at Trinity Episcopal Church. Orchestra organizers hope to reacquaint the community with this classical form.
* * *

NEWPORT - If Godfrey Malbone, one of men who built Trinity Episcopal Church in Queen Anne Square in 1726, was listening from his burial place under a pew Monday night, he might have thought he had returned to his youth.

Performing in candlelight below the pulpit on a harpsichord, violins, violas and a violoncello strung with gut rather than wire, the newly formed Newport Baroque Orchestra played its first concert to a full house.

Surrounding the nine musicians and a soprano soloist were plaques commemorating the founding families of the church, who themselves would probably have received the music well.

"They probably would have had a lot of familiarity with that type of music," the Rev. John Lawrence, minister at Trinity, said of its 18-century congregation.

The orchestra, under the direction of Paul Cienniwa, harpsichordist and music director for Trinity, is a new venture that aims to revitalize links between this specific period of classical music - composed and played between 1600 and 1750 - and the community.

Baroque music - by such composers as Vivaldi, Handel and Bach - predates the larger orchestras and sweeping symphonies that characterized 19th-century music.

In fact, there are some concrete connections between the early congregation of Trinity and the music that Cienniwa is attempting to bring back to Newport. According to Cienniwa, the first organist of the church was Charles Theodore Pachelbel, the son of a "one-hit wonder," baroque composer, Johann Pachelbel. Cienniwa noted that the elder Pachelbel's "Canon in D" is "always requested at weddings" to this day.

There is also a story that the first organ brought to the church from England was played by Handel before it was shipped, said Father Lawrence. The casing from that organ is still in the church, he said, but the organ itself is in possession of the Newport Historical Society.

Judging from the crowd at the performance on Monday night, baroque music may undergo a renaissance in the area.

Hugh and Heidi Atkins, from Portsmouth, said the orchestra was filling a void.

"We love classical music, but we always have to drive up to Boston or Providence [to hear it]," Heidi Atkins said Monday. "There isn't enough of it here, but there are plenty of people who love it," she said.

Jim McGrath, a folksinger based in Newport, agreed.

"Newport doesn't get a lot of high-end classical music," he said.

Cienniwa wants to change that. In addition to the baroque orchestra, he intends to start Newport Children's Chorus and Newport Youth Symphony Orchestra, both summer programs. He says auditions for them will be held in May. The orchestra, he hopes, will have another performance later this year.

To fund Monday night's concert, Cienniwa applied for a grant from the Rhode Island Council on the Arts. Part of his pitch, he said, was that he wanted to use Rhode Island musicians.

"We are really trying to cultivate a wider community of musicians," on Aquidneck Island, Cienniwa said."One thing we hope to do is establish a better base of professional musicians." About half of the players on Monday night were from the state, the rest were from Boston, he said.

The council gave the orchestra $2,000 for Monday night's performance, and tickets were recommended at $15. About 150 people attended. The biggest operating expense for his orchestra, Cienniwa said, was the musicians fees, which included practice and travel time.

One of the musicians at Monday's concert was the soprano Mary Therese Royal de Martinez, who lives in Providence.

She treated the audience to two pieces that were high in drama. In the first, written by Claudio Monteverdi, she sang the part of Poppea, Emperor Nero's second wife, who is congratulating herself on her success in usurping her predecessor.

"She is a woman at the zenith of her amorous powers," de Martinez told the audience. "She is about to steal Nero away from his beloved wife, Ottavia." However, de Martinez reminded the crowd, Nero kicked the pregnant Poppea to death two years later.

The soprano said she loves baroque music because of its accuracy and simplicity. "It reveals the drama," she said. "It's almost wild."