It is hard to play the trumpet with an arrow through your throat. It is also hard to play the violin with uniquely tuned strings. Chatham Baroque and guest artists Barry Bauguess (baroque trumpet) and Webb Wiggins (continuo) did so figuratively and literally Friday night at St. Stanislaus Church in the Strip District.

Performing works from 17th-Century Central Europe in Pennsylvania's second oldest Polish Church brought an aura of authenticity to the ensemble's polished performance. The setting also gave the audience a unique concert experience in one of Pittsburgh's landmarks. The post-concert reception at the Church Brew Works featured pierogies, hand crafted beers and lively conversation.

Bauguess' valveless instrument is a fiendishly difficult precursor to the modern trumpet. Each note is produced with a combination of skill and luck. Playing on a copy of a 1720 instrument, Bauguess combined the right notes with soft articulations, athletic lip trills and virtuosic registral shifts throughout the concert.

For his demonstration of the technical aspects of the instrument (and the acoustic superlatives of the space), Bauguess performed "The Trumpeter of Krakow." A warning call-to-arms played daily in the Polish city for 700 years, the original "Hejnal Krakowska" performer was killed mid-note by an arrow through the throat. Bauguess' performance (and each daily rendition) ended on a broken note, signifying the moment of the trumpeter's fatal wound.

Violinist Julie Andrijeski utilized scordatura tunings for a lively performance of Biber's "Rosary Sonata." Andrijeski detuned her violin's highest and lowest strings to enable the instrument to resonate in the specific key of D minor. The tuning was most effective in the moments requiring an aggressive, virtuosic bowing technique. Fellow Chatham Baroque members Scott Pauley (theorbo) and Patricia Halverson (viola da gamba) supported and nicely imitated the raucous style of these passages.

As preludes to compositions for the larger ensemble Wiggins played two toccatas for keyboard by Froberger. Playing on a wooden subset of the church's organ pipes, Wiggins brought these work's inner lines to the fore, making the effective chromaticism easily distinguished.