The Chicago Chamber Musicians presented a free concert Monday afternoon at the Chicago Cultural Center. The program was an accessible, all-Baroque affair, featuring two trio sonatas by Georg Philipp Telemann, with a charming, brief Handel cantata sandwiched between them.

CCM (and CSO assistant principal) oboist Michael Henoch highlighted the two brief sonatas. He played with a full, rich, complex sound. More still, he took great care to convey and underscore the harmonic intricacies of Telemann’s musical language, whose music risks sounding simple, contrived, even dippy when not performed with such care. Violinist Baird Dodge was a delight to hear also, and played with commensurate elegance.

Sunday afternoon the Chicago Sinfonietta performed at Dominican University. With conductress Alondra de la Parra in charge the orchestra provided a delightful afternoon, the kind one might not expect to expect from an ensemble in the throes of a search for a new music director. de la Parra is a formidable candidate for the position, and the Sinfonietta would be lucky to score such a coup as engaging her to replace founding director Paul Freeman.

I was apprehensive about reviewing the Chicago Philharmonic’s Sunday concert at Northwestern’s Pick-Staiger Auditorium due to a multitude of conflicting interests. My mother is on the orchestra’s board; I had given a talk about the performance; I’ve written grants for the group; my parents are donors; orchestra members are personal friends and former teachers of mine; I even played with the group once. I was concerned that if the concert were sub-par, I would have to figure out a way discreetly to suggest as much. Fortunately, that unenviable task was not to be mine, as the concert was thrilling. All that said, given these conflicting interests, you are cordially invited, as always, to ignore every last comment I might have about the performance.

So I’m a sucker for great wind playing; I guess almost a band geek. But the first half of last night’s Chicago Chamber Musicians’ concert at Gottlieb Hall was proof (not that any was needed) that a bunch of wind players have as much a place on a beautiful concert stage as on a football field. The program opened with Franz Krommer’s B-Flat Partita. A renowned oboist once said of this work specifically, “It’s the kind of music that, you know, needs a little help.” Well, the CCM players gave it that and a lot more. I was “blown” over by the nuances and emphatic attention to detail the group displayed. Pitch perfect, wide dynamic range, all that good stuff. Charles Geyer’s trumpet playing added flair to the ensemble (as did, I suppose, Krommer’s instrumentation), and Dennis Michel showed off his superb technique and tone in some virtuosic passages in the closing rondo.