The 2011 Boston Early Music Festival incerporated a Keyboard Mini-Festival, which took place on June I7 and was directed by BCS President Peter Sykes. The final event of the Mini-Festival featured two clavichord recitals, the first by Michael Tsalka and the second by Miklas Spányi. Both used a 5-octave unfretted clavichord after Schiedmayer by Allan Winkler of Medford, Massachusetts.
      Michael Tsalka's program juxtaposed variations and fantasies, beginning with the Diferencias sobre "El canto Ilano del Caballero" of Antonio de Cabezón. This piece is well-known to organists. Tsalka's rendition was deliberate and slow, as if trying to capture the weight of a larger, sustaining wind instrument. Yet his rhythm was elastic, moving moment by moment, gesture by gesture. The final vanishing arpeggio was charming.
      Johann Jakob Froberger's Fantasia II displayed more serieus counterpoint. The clavichord has the capacity to sound plucked, and ir was here that Tsalka exploired that color with a gentle stil brisé. Close your eyes, and you could swear you were hearing a lute.
      We retumed to the variation form with J.S. Bach's Aria Variata in A minor, BWV 989, alla maniera italiana. This is an early work, written in 1710, at a time when Bach undertook serieus study of Vivaldi, Marcello, Corelli and others. Tsalka played 6 of the 10 variations in this set, spinning long phrases, with a delightful inégal and a lovely violinistic, vocal quality in the pianissimo sections.
      Another Spaniard, some 150 years after Cabezón, Joseph de Torres (ca. 1670-1738) authored several pieces rediscovered in Mexico City in the 1990s and published in 2009. Among these is Obra de 1 torso bajo. A work of varied character, it alternates block chords with contrapuntal fantasy. On the clavichord, the result is often excessive action noise. Although this insistent piece requires the flaming reeds and varied registrations of the Spanish Baroque organ, it is still a rare delight to hear a "new" old keyboard work.
     Tsalka maintains "Everty clavichord recital should include a piece by Emanuel Bach. The Fantasia in C, Wq. 59/6 was his selectien for this one, and he showed himself a master of the grand gesture. His fast arpeggiation was mesmerizing, and his high notes were squeezed to their expressive limit. One recurring motive of the piece is an ascending arpeggio that ends in a quarter-note, followed by a higher-pitched comment of 2 eighth-notes. Tsalka routinely made the quarter into an eighth, which upended the rhythm of the comment, to questionahle effect. But one must be allowed some rhythmic freedom in a fantasia. His final cadence was abrupt and quiet, a Tsalka signature whose surprise evokes an appreciative chuckle from the audience.
      The program ended with two sets of variations from Mozart, Six Variations on "Salve Tu Domirae" in F, K. 398 and Eight Variations on "Ein Weib ist das herrlichste Ding" in F, K. 613. The "Salve" variations incorporate tendinitis-inducing extended trills in each hand, and Tsalka handled them effortlessly. This piece had been played in a fortepiano recital in the previous session. One listener who had heard both concerts remarked that the fortepiano performance was the more introverted. Tsalka is very much informed by the technique and language of both the fortepiano and the modem piano. A musical extrovert, he tends toward the dramatic, the surprising, the flamboyant. Despite the occasional humming along (Pablo Casals was also guilty of this annoyance), this was an outstanding performance.

TANGENTS! The Bulletin of the Boston Clavichord Society, Winter, 2011