The Tempesta di Mare Chamber Players will present a concert of Trio Sonatas by Johann Sebastian Bach on Sunday, April 6, at 4 p.m. in the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, 8855 Germantown Ave. The local performance will be preceded Friday, April 4, at 7 p.m. in Christ Church Christiana Hundred, Wilmington and Saturday, April 5, at 7:30 p.m. in Trinity Memorial Church, 22nd and Spruce Streets in Center City.

 These Trio Sonatas, arranged for various complements of chamber ensembles, are based on Bach’s Trio Sonatas for Organ, BWV 525-30. They will be performed on recorders, violins, cellos, lute and harpsichord.

 The individual scores are Sonatas Nos. I through VI. The players include Gwyn Roberts on recorder, violinists Emlyn Ngai & Francis Liu, Lisa Terry on cello & viola da gamba, lutenist Richard Stone, and harpsichordist Dongsok Shin.

 Tickets range in price from $40 to $50, with full-time students and young people grades 3 to 12 admitted free. For more information call 215-755-8776 or visit tempestadimare.org.

 Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’

 Francisco Fullana will do double duty with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia Friday, March 28, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, March 30, at 2:30 p.m. in the Kimmel Center’s Perelman Theater. Fullana will both conduct and solo in Antonio Vivaldi’s “Spring Concerto” from his “The Four Seasons.” 

 The program will also include selections from Philip Glass’ Violin Concerto No. 2, Max Richter’s “Four Seasons,” and Astor Pantaleon Piazolla’s “The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires.”

 For ticket information call 215-545-1739 or visit chamberorchesdtra.org.

 Mexican Sacred Choral Music

 Chestnut Hill conductor Donald Meineke led Choral Arts Philadelphia in a concert dubbed “Cathedrals of Mexico: Grand Polyphony of Puebla and Mexico City.” The performance took place Saturday afternoon, March 15, in the Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity, Rittenhouse Square, Center City Philadelphia.

 Meineke, who is also the organist and director of music at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Locust Street, Philadelphia, oversaw a raft of fine interpretations of music mostly unknown to even the most dedicated and sophisticated lovers of sacred choral music, particularly on the East Coast of the United States. We often forget that while the North American colonies of the British and French Empires were rudimentary in their cultural characteristics, those colonies in Mexico that comprised the most established provinces of the Spanish Empire were part and parcel of an evolved and sophisticated Spanish culture. And until the 18th century, Spain was the largest European empire in the world.

 The program’s principal work was the “Missa Ego flos campi” by Francisco Guerrero, who lived from 1528 until 1599 – virtually the very end of the Renaissance and the opening of the Baroque style of music. This setting of the Latin Mass of the Roman Catholic Church was based on the composer’s own motet of the same name – “I am a flower of the field and a lilly of the valley.” This technique was a common manner for Renaissance composers, either those living in Spain, itself, or in its New World colonies, such as Mexico.

 The ”Kyrie,” “Gloria,” “Credo,” “Sanctus” and “Agnus Dei” are voiced in a flawless flow of polyphony that surrounds the “cantus firmus” of the inspiring motet. The shifting modal harmonies of the late Renaissance both bring to a close the seminal harmonic language of that era and open the door to the Baroque’s developing focus on major/minor tonality. 

 Meineke led his 50-member choir with a perfect blend of supple sensitivity and rock-solid authority. The sound of the chorus blossomed with an amplitude of glowing resonance that filled the wide-open expanse of Holy Trinity’s Victorian Romanesque sanctuary. 

John Walthausen, organist and director of music at the First Presbyterian Church in Germantown, was at the console of the chancel organ. He provided efficaciously registered accompaniment to the choir’s singing spiced with occasional complements from the gallery organ, which originally graced First Baptist Church of Philadelphia.

Walthausen will lead the Germantown Oratorio Choir and Orchestra in a performance of Arthur Honegger’s “King David” Sunday, April 6, at 3 p.m. in Germantown Presbyterian Church, 35 W. Chelten Ave. Visit fpcGermantown.org for more information.

Choral Arts Philadelphia will round out its 2024-25 concert season Saturday, May 17, at 3:30 p.m. with “Echoes of Heaven” in St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church, on 20th Street between Locust and Spruce, just west of Rittenhouse Square in Center City. For ticket information visit choralartsphila.org.

You can contact NOTEWORTHY at Michael-caruso@comcast.net.