In what is arguably the most generally recommendable version played on modern instruments, for instance, conducted by James Levine with Placido Domingo as Idomeneo (Deutsche Grammophon), the Munich score is given more or less intact, though some recitatives are shortened.
He is using the modern instrument for his recital on Sunday, which includes Bach's Italian Concerto, Beethoven's Sonata in F (Op. 54) and Schubert's Sonata in B flat.
He played the first five Bach suites on a modern instrument — for the sixth he used an authentic five-string cello — but his intimate, conversational phrasing echoed what we vaguely know of Baroque practice.
The Dutch cellist Pieter Wispelwey has won great critical acclaim for his technically accomplished, musically probing and stylistically informed performances both on period and on modern instruments.
But the ensemble is best known for its zesty performances of Baroque and Classical music, performed on modern instruments, and it played to its strengths on Sunday evening at Zankel Hall in a program devoted to Handel and his contemporaries.
One can make a case for transcriptions on modern instruments and even for ensembles as peculiarly appointed as the one assembled for the madrigals.
Brey's performances, which were executed on two made-to-order Baroque-style cellos by the luthier Jim McKean, had such an unpretentious confidence about them that I thought from now on I would foreswear any performances on modern instruments.
Do you realize how much great music is never played, simply because it doesn't sound right on modern instruments?" Mr. Luca explored some of that music in his concerts and on disc.
They certainly seemed festive on Sunday, exuding a ruddy good health as played on modern instruments, the stage bathed in a warm glow emanating from the raised orange lid of the harpsichord.
The signal success of "historically informed performance," in the term now favored by the early-music world, has been its pervasive influence on musicians who play Baroque- and Classical-era works on modern instruments.
