La Folia Barockorchester, direction: Robin Peter Müller

Johann David Heinichen (1683 – 1729) was a German Baroque composer who brought the musical genius of Venice to the court of Augustus the Strong in Dresden.  So the choice of this work is most appropriate for ‘Bach, the Court Composer’. Both his father and himself attended the Thomasschule in Leipzig. He received organ and harpsichord lessons from Johann Kuhnau. He became a lawyer (as many musicians did – Goethe’s advice to budding poets was similar). He went later to Italy and spent seven years studying composition there, mainly in Venice. He achieved great success with two operas, Mario and Le passioni per troppo amore (1713).

Dresden in the year 1719 witnessed the opulently staged marriage between Prince Frederick Augustus II of Saxony to the Archduchess Maria Josepha of Austria which took place on August 20 of that year in Vienna. The theme of these lavish festivities  were the planet deities Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, Diana, Mercury, Venus and Saturn. Opening this festival of the planets, the serenata La gara degli dei, composed by the then Royal Polish and Electoral Saxon kapellmeister Johann David Heinichen. This extraordinary work, first performed on the feast of Apollo, was simply a preview of the festivities to come.

The music is heavily and not unexpectedly influenced by the composer’s years in Italy. The work is replete with extraordinary rhythms, thirteen marvelous and increasingly demanding virtuoso arias as well as bizarre sound effects. Originally the ‘Gods’ were suspended on a ‘cloud’ above the audience, the performance ending with a firework display. The work is almost entirely in C major apart from Mars who sings an aria in C minor. The music was often intended to reflect the character of the bridal couple.

The La Folia Barockorchester and all the singers under the direction of Robin Peter Müller were absolutely spectacular in this performance. What an outstanding period orchestra this is with an energy level and communicative emotional musical life far above the so-called ‘average’. Both soloists and orchestra brought fiery musical energy and theatrical commitment of a high order to each characteristic ‘God’ and their ‘personality’. I have neither the time nor the space to analyse individual performances but to be honest I was completely bowled over by a work and composer previously unknown to me. May I plead for a staged performance and recording soon with original seductively naive, eighteenth century Baroque stage apparatus and ‘business’.

After the welcome interval (it is stiflingly hot in Leipzig just at the moment) I heard the finest, most breath-taking performance I have ever heard of the French influenced Bach Overture BWV 1068.  The driving forward energy of the dance, articulation, inner orchestral details, counterpoint and exciting tempo swept one along like an avalanche. This orchestra is unique in this motivic energy I felt, carrying one unresistant, like a river taken at the flood. Yet one did not feel the slightest rushed, the French style retained, a recognition of the inevitability in this energized manner of reading the score. A magnificent interpretation.

Finally a most amusing work by Bach, Geschwinde, geschwinde, ihr wirbelnden Winde, BWV 201 (1729). With the Leipzig Collegium musicum, Bach often paid tribute to his patrons, the Saxon electoral family who had by now granted him the title Royal Polish and Electoral Saxon Court Composer. In this cantata or  dramma per musica, an amusing setting of a song contest between Pan and Phoebus, Bach established himself as an advocate of ‘artful’  music as opposed to the music of ‘low entertainment’. Ovid in his Metamorphoses depicts a musical contest between the shepherd god Pan (master of the flute rather crudely sings an aria for ‘dancing, leaping’ in unrestrained style) and Phoebus Apollo a most lyrical and affecting aria expressing with longing his love of Hyacinth. The foolish King Midas selects Pan as the victor but the introduced figure of Momus, the god of rebuke. comments to him ‘You have yet more brothers like yourself / folly and unreason / would now be the neighbours of wisdom / people judge at random / and those who do so / all belong to your fraternity.’ This moral and musical lesson was performed with the greatest amusement and panache, the singer judges in T shirts bearing the mottoes ‘Pan for President’ and  ‘I ♥ Phoebus’ – a delightful conceit.

A highly enjoyable concert of music most of which was unfamiliar to me. Surely this educational and informative musical dimension is one of the greatest values of the Bach Leipzig Festival.

 A. Vivaldi: Konzert D-Dur, RV 208

J. S. Bach: Konzert C-Dur, BWV 594

A. Vivaldi: Konzert a-Moll, op. 3 Nr. 8, RV 522

J. S. Bach: Konzert a-Moll, BWV 593

A. Vivaldi: Konzert d-Moll, op. 3 Nr. 11, RV 565

J. S. Bach: Konzert d-Moll, BWV 596

A. Vivaldi: Konzert h-Moll, op. 3 Nr. 10, RV 580

Jörg Halubek (organ), Chouchane Siranossian (violin), Katharina Heutjer (violin), La Cetra Barockorchester Basel, direction: Andrea Marcon

Johann Sebastian was a young man of 23 when he moved from Mühlhausen to beautiful, forward-thinking, artistic and progressive Weimar. Prince Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar was intensely interested in music. The twelve concertos from Antonio Vivaldi’s L’estro armonico’ graced the court from a visit the prince made to Amsterdam where he purchased them. Bach made various organ transcriptions of these Italian concertos for the organ.

In this concert we first heard the Violin concerto in D major named ‘Grosso Mogul’ with the brilliant, award-winning young French virtuoso of Armenian background, Chouchane Siranossian. The La Cetra Barockorchester Basel under Andrea Marcon gave her stylish and energetic support. This concerto is one of Vivaldi’s most virtuosic. There are various ‘oriental’ associations in the music as the Great Mogul of India Aurangzeb (1618-1707) was a most feared potentate. Untypically, Bach transcribed this concerto for organ into the key of C major. Throughout this concert of educational contrasts, it was instructive to hear how difficult it was for Bach to transcribe these works for such an unenvisioned keyboard instrument, fluctuating as the writing does between virtuoso solo passages for violin and orchestral tutti ritornellos. One can hear Bach’s brilliant solutions to knotty difficulties for the hands and feet to accomplish. The future influence on Bach of Italian music (say in the Italian Concerto) is clear.

A virtuoso dialogue

J. S. Bach: Sonate E-Dur, BWV 1016

J. S. Bach: Partita d-Moll, BWV 1004

J. S. Bach: Sonate h-Moll, BWV 1014

J. S. Bach: Toccata d-Moll, BWV 913

J. S. Bach: Sonate G-Dur, BWV 1019

Isabelle Faust (violin)

Kristian Bezuidenhout (harpsichord − Artist in Residence)

The six (the magic number) sonatas for violin and harpsichord BWV 1014-1019 are outstanding works, early masterpieces in fact, based on the fashionable trio sonatas. They emerged for the composer’s sojourn in Köthen where many outstanding musicians performed. Certainly Bach exploited the virtuoso possibilities of both instruments in ‘dialogue’ to the maximum in these sonatas. Interestingly a two-manual harpsichord is essential for them. Bach traveled to Berlin to buy an instrument by the renowned maker Michael Mietke which may be connected to their composition..

Perhaps needless to say these two artists gave a remarkable account of these works. They appear to play in with beautiful symbiosis and musical understanding. The affecting melody of the divine Adagio ma non tanto from the E major sonata BWV 1016 was extraordinarily moving.

Isabelle Faust then gave a magnificently organic and structurally integrated performance of the Partita for unaccompanied violin in D minor BWV 1004. The closing Ciaconna was like a monumental sculpture that grew seamlessly from the previous movements – a great cathedral like Reims or Chartres rising triumphantly in sound. Kristian Bezuidenhout later gave us a splendidly expressive and virtuosic account of the fiendishly difficult Toccata in D minor BWV 913 for solo harpsichord. He managed to communicate a tremendously fluent, appropriate feeling of improvisation and drama to the work.

An informal talk with Kristian Bezuidenhout in the courtyard of the Bach Museum in Leipzig, 19th June 2019, during the Leipzig Bach Festival 

Bach, Court Compositeur

I was fortunate enough to be able to arrange an informal talk with this Artist in Residence. I neglected to write it up at the time so I will try to make amends here from my notes. He and Isabelle Faust the previous evening had given a superfine virtuoso performance of six Bach sonatas for violin and harpsichord. We sat in the attractive courtyard of the Bach Museum.

I spoke a little about my own background with the harpsichord in London in the 1970s, studying with Maria Boxall (editor of the keyboard works of John Blow and author of a n outstanding harpsichord method). I witnessed the extremely exciting early days of the so-called ‘Early Music’ revival in London. This was when Christopher Hogwood was just becoming known, a youthful Trevor Pinnock was playing in Hampstead parish churches, Ton Koopman was giving solo recitals as was Bob van Asperen, Gustav Leonhardt and Nikolaus Harnoncourt – all revolutionizing the performance practice and study of Bach. Many performed at St. John’s Smith Square and the Spitalfields Festival. We spoke of his background in South Africa and Australia – with some animation me being Australian and also knowing South Africa well after researching in Cape Town a recent biography I wrote!

Kristian began with a surprising remark in view of his career, that his first experience with the harpsichord and fortepiano was an ‘alien encounter’. He had studied the modern instrument. However he was overwhelmed on first hearing Gustav Leonhardt playing the works of Antoine Forqueray and Jacques Duphly.

As the 2019 Leipzig Bach Festival was entitled Bach, Court Compositeur, we talked at length about the significant influence of French music and performance tradition on Bach. He considers that one must fully understand the cantatas and sacred works (his first love) to be able to meaningfully play the keyboard works. He pointed out the familiarity of the liturgical year to music lovers as art of the congregation in Bach’s day. The conclusion of the St. Matthew Passion is of course deeply tragic but the congregation knew that in the following week the Resurrection was coming.

We then talked about his remarkably close artistic relationship with the magnificent Freiburger Barockorchester (he is Artistic Director), his role as Principal Guest Conductor of the English Concert, his conducting association with the outstanding Les Arts Florissants and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. He was awarded the Gramophone  Artist of the Year in 2013. At this point he expressed his great enthusiasm for Paul McNulty’s reproduction period pianos. He has recorded the complete Mozart piano concertos on a McNulty copy of an Anton Walter & Sohn instrument, Vienna 1805 with the Freiburger Barockorchester under Gottfried von der Goltz. One of my favorite recordings of his is the  breathtakingly brilliant youthful and prodigious Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Double concerto for Violin and Piano (with Isabelle Faust) and the Piano concerto in A minor.

We then began to discuss in some detail the keyboard implications of the fascinating fingering of Francois Couperin and how each finger and key had been given its own character during the French classical tradition. I also mentioned that this was an influence on the penciled in fingerings of Fyderyk Chopin as well. Unfortunately at this point it began to rain and we had to leave the delightful open courtyard and draw the informal talk to a close, promising to meet in Warsaw on August 30th when he performs  and conducts the Mozart Piano Concerto in C Major K. 503 with the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century as part of the 15th Chopin and His Europe Festival.

Tue 18th June 2019  20.00

Nikolaikirche

Bach and Weimar

Music at the French Court

 J. S. Bach: Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, BWV 61

G. P. Telemann: Deus, judicium tuum, TWV 7: 7

J. S. Bach: Overture in C major, BWV 1066

J. B. Lully: Te Deum, LWV 55

Gesine Adler (soprano), Susanne Langner (alto), Stefan Kunath (altus), Tobias Hunger (tenor), Klaus Mertens (bass)

Collegium Vocale Leipzig

Merseburger Hofmusik, direction: Michael Schönheit

Unfortunately, there was a conflict in the festival programming which made a decision which concert to attend particularly tormenting. How to decide between a performance of The Art of Fugue and a programme that explored the influence of French music in Bach. As I have been immersed in the fête galant world of the sensibility of Antoine Watteau and Francois Couperin for many years, I decided against the magnificent intellectual labyrinth of the fugue to embrace the more hedonistic delights of the French influence on Bach.

Voltaire called the seventeenth century in Europe the century of Louis XIV. This Apollonian Bourbon used the fine arts, monumental architecture, landscaped formal gardens and superbly refined music to give France a supremacy and influence in culture and politics that she has never regained but is certainly recalled. The king supported his luminaries and creative people to an unprecedented degree which ‘elevated him not only above the heroes of his race or those of other peoples, but beyond the scope and boundaries of the mortal condition.’ Bach was born towards the end of the century (1685) at a time when the French organ school of Nicolas de Grigny and Jean-Henri d’Anglebert was exerting influence on the North German organ school of Bach’s youth and when engaged as a Court musician. He heard much Italian and French orchestral and harpsichord music (predominantly that of Francois Couperin) which influenced him greatly. But where Louis XIV used music to extend the power and political influence of his royal absolutism to the point of decadence at the end of his life, Bach wrote in a religious church music context (the cantatas) to pay homage to the glory, the power and the omnipotence of the Christian God.

In the first work on the programme Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland  (Now come, saviour of the gentiles) BWV 61 (1714) for the 1st Sunday in Advent, Bach combines French elements and that of North German music. The opening chorus is written in the style of a grand French Overture, a great favourite for Bach opening movements (the arrival of the Sun King was often announced with such noble, stately music). The Collegium Vocale Leipzig and Merseburger Hofmusik, directed by Michael Schönheit gave a fine account of this work.

This was followed by a Grand Motet by Telemann Deus , judicum tuum, TWV7:7 (1738). This composer was a far more cosmopolitan figure than Bach and had spent almost a year in Paris meeting members of the royal court orchestra, Jean-Philippe Rameau and impressing Parisian audiences with his own compositions. The Grand Motet was a French genre that gave a musical focus to Louis attending the Chapelle Royale for daily mass. Again a fine performance that showed a deep understanding and familiarity with French baroque performance practice.

The ‘Florentine’ Jean Baptiste Lully controlled every aspect of operatic composition and motets (he wrote twelve) in the France of Louis XIV. He was a strict disciplinarian over his singers and instrumentalists insisting on the highest musical performance standards, obsessively centralizing the final outcome. The Te Deum which we heard this evening was composed in 1677 for the christening of his son Louis, a godchild of Louis XIV. It is an ostentatious and noble work for two choirs with prominent declamatory parts for timpani and trumpets.

In a later performance on January 8, 1687 to celebrate the recovery of the king from an illness, he accidentally stabbed himself in the foot with his baton. The wound turned septic and gangrene set in. The inscription on his tomb reads ironically in part, considering the cause of his death : ‘God , who endowed him with these talents over all men of his century, gave him as a reward for the inimitable hymns which he has composed to his praise with a truly Christian patience during the acute pains of illness….’ With unconditional support from the Sun King, Lully had little to fear from rival composers or cabals and high level accusations against him, although there were many. The rivalry between the French chorus and ballet and the vocal art of the Italians (Louis XIV was a brilliant dancer and often took part in his own court spectacles). The idea of a reconciliation between the rival French and Italian styles of composition inspired many composers. Francois Couperin wrote a fine work entitled Les goûts réunis (The Styles Reunited).

This was a splendid opulent performance, full-blooded and trumpet and timpani resplendent in the Nikolaikirche with tremendous forward impetus and grandeur. One was justifiably placed in awe of the genius of Lully and his unquestioned hegemony over the orchestral, operatic and religious French music of the day.

Wed 19th June 2019  17.00 

Haus Leipzig

Bach and Cöthen

 Bach Dances

J. S. Bach: Partita G-Dur, BWV 829

J. S. Bach: Partita a-Moll, BWV 827

J. S. Bach: Partita B-Dur, BWV 825

J. S. Bach: Partita c-Moll, BWV 826

J. S. Bach: Partita D-Dur, BWV 828

J. S. Bach: Partita e-Moll, BWV 830

Sir András Schiff (piano)

This was one of the highlights of the festival for me. First of all a few words about the gestation of the incomparable Bach Partitas. Clearly, Bach had been influenced by French music in his composition of the French and English Suites (all begin with a prelude) and  all of which conventionally contain an allemande, courante and sarabande. However, in the orchestral suites there are various combinations of familiar movements but a smattering of unique inventions such as the forlane, badinerie and rejouissance. In the partitas, published as the Clavierübung Op.1, the introductory pieces are all different and possibly experimental – prelude, sinfonia, fantasia, overture, preambulum and toccata. In their central sections he adds all manner of new and established forms such as the gavotte, menuet, passepied, air, rondeau, burlesca and scherzo. Were they conceived with the harpsichord, clavichord, Cristofori  or Silbermann piano in mind ? Should this concern us at all ?

Despite the almost oppressive heat, Sir András Schiff gave one of these flawless performances that on every level one was left with nothing left to say. Surely being reduced to awed silence is an incontrovertible sign of greatness. His complete understanding of the various French dance forms and performance practice, varied, subtle articulation, intensely musical phrasing, affecting expressiveness, minimal or no use of the pedal, polyphonic grasp and clarity of voice, eloquent left hand counterpoint, nobility of overall structure and conception, variation in dynamics, an air of courtly grandeur, organic musical growth, inspiring energy, seamless legato and glorious cantabile, perfectly judged note duration, buoyant rhythmic variety, lightness and a velvet quality of touch never bordering on the harsh even in forte, incandescent tone……need I continue?

An utterly satisfying artistic and aesthetic experience on every conceivable level by one of the greatest pianists performing today and undoubtedly one of the greatest living Bach exponents on the pianoforte.

And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here

Shakespeare, Henry V

Wed 19th June 2019  20.00

Nikolaikirche

Passion

J. S. Bach: Präludium B minor, BWV 544/1

J. Gallus: Ecce quomodo moritur justus

J. S. Bach: Johannes-Passion, BWV 245, (Fassung 1725)

Solomon’s Knot, direction: Jonathan Sells

Opening the theme ‘Passion’ for this concert note a little historical significance. In Leipzig on 17 October 1727, there was a memorial service for the departed Christiane Eberhardine der Starke, Electress of Saxony and the Queen of Poland. Bach wrote the cantata described as ‘funeral music in Italian style’ Lass, Fürstin, lass noch einen Strahl, BWV 198. Bach played the organ at the ceremony, the piece performed may well have been this Prelude and Fugue in B minor. The associations of this key were considered melancholy and of plaintiff yearning in mood. It is a work of profound emotion.

The work was given a fine virtuoso performance on the impressive 19th century organ of the Nikolaikirche by Chad Kelley. The organ was built in 1862 by the Weissenfels organ builder Friedrich Ladegast and is the largest in Saxony. Kelley is a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, was organ scholar and read music at Girton College, Cambridge, graduating in 2011 with double first-class honours.

The Motet by Jakob Handl (J. Gallus) Ecce quomodo moritur justus (See how the just dies) was performed by Bach as part of Good Friday Vespers at the principal churches in Leipzig 1724-1749. He often performed works by other composers during Passion week. This work was originally sung at Protestant burials in the 16th century as a funeral motet.

We tend to consider Bach’s Passions as competed, integrated and finished masterpieces. However, this is far from how he considered them at the time. Although he oversaw the performance of both the St. John and the St. Matthew Passions in Leipzig on many occasions they were rarely given in a similar form each time. There were many different arrangements of the St. John Passion given, assembled in ways we would find extraordinarily arbitrary but which were an obvious choice for the pragmatic Cantor given the prevailing circumstances of orchestral musicians available, choirs, singers and the place of worship. Even the censor may have been involved in toning down the graphic Baroque texts describing Christ’s suffering: Imagine, that his blood-bespattered body in every member is part of heaven above. We heard the 1724 version known as Version 1.

Solomon’s Knot under the direction of Jonathan Sells gave an engaging, even theatrically complex account of this Passion. Arias were directed at the ‘congregation’ almost operatically, as if attempting to engage in an authentic dialogue personally with every occupant of the Nikolaikirche, this in a manner that was both dramatic and highly emotional. A uniquely inclusive experience in my opinion as we were inexorably drawn into the anger and cruelty of the passion poetry and text. In choruses one felt one should be singing together with the choir in a state of piety. This even resulted in a feeling of religious deprivation as we did not so do.

And so this remarkable Bach pilgrimage to the ‘sacred places’ in Leipzig associated with this great composer, the greatest of harmonists, came to an end for me. The festival would however continue for another four days. As I left the Nikolaikirche and embraced the still Leipzig summer night for the last time this year, I could not help but feel a sense of loss, yet this emotion was mixed with the elation that I had fortunately managed to attend once again this remarkable affirmation of the human spiritual and creative spirit in the face of the dark side of human nature.

Next year the festival of 2020 will be devoted to the idea of the appreciation of Bach as a worldwide assemblage of acolytes. We are a FAMILY !  Yes, an international family of Bach choirs have been recruited from the farthest corners of the earth. They will assemble in Leipzig in June 2020 to once more scale the heights of immortal and shared inspirations of the greatest in music.