E-Mail This Article to a Friend Old and new The Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, the Cantata Singers, and Intermezzo BY LLOYD SCHWARTZ

Although the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin got started in East Berlin 23 years ago, in what was a dicy endeavor for any independent organization (and it’s still not supported by any public subsidies), the current American tour by this prize-winning ensemble is its first. The Bank of America Celebrity Series teamed up with the Boston Early Music Festival to bring the Akademie to Jordan Hall, and the concert was an early sellout.

The first thing that strikes one about these 17 players is their color-coordinated look, the colors being red, black, and gray. The women’s dresses, all different shapes, are in varying combinations of crimson and black: sleeved and sleeveless, low-cut and high-necked, a skirt with red and black panels, a shoulderless red gown with black bodice and fingerless black gloves, a black gown with red edging. The men wear red, gray, or black ties with their black suits.

Close your eyes and it’s impossible to tell how many musicians are playing. They have no official music director, but they do have an extraordinarily unified sound. Two violinists of different temperaments take turns as leader: compact, self-contained Georg Kallweit, who rocks back and forth and dips; and gangly, stoop-shouldered Stephan Mai, who looks like a country fiddler who hunches and swoops into each phrase, turns to the other players, and often has his back to the audience. In Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins in D minor (the music Balanchine used for his Concerto Barocco), Kallweit and the younger Midori Seiler sounded as if they were playing a single instrument. The strings had a velvety tone, with little of the nasal whine of much early-instrument playing. Oboist Xenia Löffler doubled on recorder; Björn Colell played both lute and guitar. The ensemble work, even at breathless speeds, was phenomenal.

The program consisted entirely of early 18th-century music, mostly in D minor. Yet there was plenty of variety: dramatic alternations of speed (very fast, with vigorous rhythmic thrusts, followed by lyrically slow and buoyant) and dynamics (much of the phrasing created by sculpting the volume within each phrase), with an emphasis on surprising harmonic undercurrents. A highlight of the suite from Handel’s Almira, Queen of Castile, the only surviving opera of the four he wrote in Hamburg, was the tender Saraband, with hushed strings accompanying an extended lute solo. The stealthy tread of cello, bass, and lute that opened Vivaldi’s D-minor Concerto for Two Oboes (Löffler and Michael Bosch) dissolved into a lovely duet for the two soloists (sounding as one), which in turn gave way to the surprise attacks of the Allegro molto finale.

Bach’s Double Concerto was an ideal follow-up to the grace and charm of the Vivaldi. In the central slow movement, the Akademie went not for Bach’s all-embracing, all-consoling spiritual sublimity but for an almost sexual intensity that built the movement to an inexorable climax, then floated downward in exquisite release.

Between the Vivaldi and Bach concertos, as later between Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 1, in C major, and Geminiani’s Concerto Grosso No. 12, again in D minor, were extended tuning sessions that provided their own tonal variety. (Did you think you’d find no quarter-tones at an early-music concert?) Led by Mai, the Orchestral Suite had a military flavor unusual for a suite of dances: clipped, rhythmic drumming in the strings accompanied trumpet-like oboe fanfares. The Bourrée was a lightning flash before the final airy Passapied. The Geminiani, a tribute to Corelli’s famous "La follia" (a set of variations on a wild Spanish dance), moved like a juggernaut. Powerful, brilliant solos passed from one player to the next. At the end, the violists were striking the backs of their bows, flamenco-like, against the sides of their instruments.

In the first encore, an exhilarating Bourrée by Erlebach (D minor again), players tapped their instruments with their hands. The evening ended with a quiet Telemann Air in (at last!) D major. I trust the Celebrity Series will want the Akademie back at the earliest opportunity. So will the audience.