Infusion Baroque delivers musical mystery

Ensemble breaks traditions

Murder, mystery and intrigue are the stuff of literature, film and theater — and now of early music performances we well.

The Montreal-based Infusion Baroque ensemble appeared at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church Saturday evening on the Early Music Now series, merrily breaking established traditions of concert presentations, as well as some of Early Music Now’s traditions.

The quartet of baroque flutist Alexa Raine Wright, baroque violinist Sallynee Amawat, baroque cellist Camille Paquette-Roy and harpsichordist Rona Nadler presented a program of chamber music that straddled the line between the Baroque and Classical eras, putting their repertoire well outside the norm for an Early Music Now presentation.

The ensemble, a relative newcomer to the early music field, presented “A Musical Murder Mystery Soiree” entitled “Who Killed Leclair?”

The musical core of the evening’s program consisted of three pieces by Jean-Marie Leclair, interspersed with music by his contemporaries/rivals, Mondonville, Guignon and Locatelli.

The women played with polish, energy and finely honed style. They crafted beautifully shaped phrases, presented with an ongoing exchange of musical ideas and dynamic contrasts that came across like animated conversations.

And oh, the ornaments. In keeping with their mid-18th-century program, the women, particularly flutist Raine Wright, liberally spiced melodic lines with sometimes-playful, sometimes florid, always graceful turns, trills, appoggiaturas, glissandos and so on.

This was musically rich, detailed-infused playing that turned an evening of what were actually relatively similar pieces into a lovely tapestry of musical contrasts.

Some sagging pitch, likely due in part to temperature fluctuations in the church, was also a part of the performance, as were some balance issues that buried the soft-edged sound of the baroque flute in the more pointed string sounds from time to time in the space’s live acoustic.

Throughout a program of pieces by Leclaire and his contemporaries and rivals, the women took turns telling the story of the composer’s murder — a story that sounds a bit like something from a modern tabloid.

Leclair was murdered in his Paris home in 1764 — a crime never solved. The police of his day identified three principal suspects: his estranged wife, his gardener and his nephew.

According to a showof-hands vote from Saturday evening’s audience, the nephew did it.