REVIEW: A PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE SLICE OF BACH

By CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM

The violinist Viktoria Mullova, center, with the Accademia Bizantina at Zankel Hall on Tuesday evening.CreditPete Checchia

“Pizza is like sex,” Woody Allen may actually have said once. “When it’s bad it’s still pretty good.”

The same might be true of Bach’s music. This much seemed evident from Tuesday’s all-Bach program by the Italian period-instrument ensembleAccademia Bizantina with the violinist Viktoria Mullova at Zankel Hall. Her playing was diffident, her sound mousy and lackluster. But as a chance to spend a couple of hours in the company of Bach’s consoling genius, the concert still pretty much hit the spot.

Ms. Mullova rose to fame in the 1980s with her Russian-school killer technique and elegant sound. Since then she has also turned to historical performance practice — sometimes playing, as she did here, on gut strings with a Baroque-style bow. On Tuesday she seemed to struggle to build depth in her sound and produced a distracting number of whistle tones.

Perhaps the rainy weather can take some of the blame: Period instruments are famously temperamental. Missing, though, were any signs of temperament on Ms. Mullova’s part as she read each concerto from sheet music, her body language betraying little connection either to the audience or to her collaborators onstage.

Ms. Mullova’s detached manner stood out especially against that of the ensemble members, who, led from the harpsichord by Ottavio Dantone, played with verve and energy. But the program gave them no chance to shine. I would have liked to have heard the first violinist, Alessandro Tampieri, go head to head with Ms. Mullova in the double violin concerto in D minor. Instead, bookended by Bach’s two best-known violin concertos — in A minor and E — the concert featured two transcriptions by Mr. Dantone.

The first was an unsuccessful arrangement for violin and harpsichord of the Concerto for Oboe and Violin, a gorgeous piece that normally thrives on the juxtaposition of the distinct but equally songful voices of its solo instruments. Harpsichords are ill-equipped to produce that vocal quality. The resulting imbalance meant that in the serene Adagio, Ms. Mullova seemed to be enacting a pas de deux on her own, the oboe’s part reduced to a distant, tinny tinkle.

The reverse process made the following piece more satisfying, as the solo part of the Harpsichord Concerto No. 2 in E was given over to the violin. I would have wished for more color contrast in Ms. Mullova’s playing to evoke the multiplicity of voices in the original. But the achingly dense chromatic harmonies of the slow movement were rendered with loving care by the Accademia players, a reminder of the consistent high standards of this valuable ensemble.

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