Happy 10th, Tempesta

Tempesta di Mare threw itself a grand 10th birthday party last weekend, with a record-high assemblage of musicians - usually 25 were onstage, wind, brass, and all. That'll galvanize audiences, in a move as tactically intelligent as it was celebratory: Musicians take charge of their own promotion (who else will these days?). And with it came one of the group's most successful musical reclamations.

Our 21st-century sensibility rebels mightily against the idea that a cultivated piece of classical music (or any music) was written to be heard only once. What an inefficient work model! But that was apparently the case with some 18th-century composers - and one reason I haven't shared Tempesta's enthusiasm for Johann Friedrich Fasch, the 18th-century composer whose music doesn't always ask for repeated examination.

His Ouverture in D was heard Saturday at the Arch Street Meeting House in what was its U.S. premiere (though I question the importance of that distinction). Fasch seems most viable when writing for large orchestra, though even then the musical substance isn't always engaging. Then again, one's perception may depend on how well one is able to step out of the inevitable overstimulation of modern life.

Though reasonably welcome on Saturday, Fasch was luckily positioned before Jean-Philippe Rameau's infinitely more substantial Les Fetes de Polymnie, whose neglect is clearly a cosmic mistake. The 1745 opera was written for a special occasion - a major minus, since occasion works become immediately dated. But Tempesta's suite of dances avoided the opera's perhaps creaky allegorical plot and revealed a score so inventive, colorful, and overstuffed as to be delightfully subversive.

Most baroque-era composers expressed their individuality in the music's inner workings. Rameau did so in ways that made the outer formalities burst at the seams, especially in this piece. Melodies sometimes sound like his predecessor, Jean-Baptiste Lully, played backward. Bass lines had minds of their own and were often irritable.

Numerous phrases had an extra two- or three-note appendix - a slap at the dictatorial symmetry that was often a part of this musical world. As a Ramist over many decades, I had barely heard the title of this piece, much less the music. This may be the single most marvelous discovery of Tempesta's decade - thanks to cofounders Gwyn Roberts and Richard Stone.

The suite also had the best performance of the evening, not just in terms of polish but also in taking the music's quirks seriously, rather than as an occasion for silliness. Tempesta's larger ensemble concerts can be unruly, and that can make performances seem reckless, though in a good way. William Boyce's Symphony in A (Op. 2 No. 2) was ingratiating, as was Vivaldi's Concerto for Four Violins, which had a strong musical kinship to The Four Seasons but with all sorts of quadruple effects that come with having so many soloists.