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Alix Goolden Performance Hall
February 22, 2014
It was one of those filthy late winter evenings when blasts of icy rain make it almost unthinkable to head outside, but, for the slightly smaller than usual audience who had braved the elements, the reward was as dreamily exquisite as an invitation from Oberon, delivered by Puck himself to enter a world of tender and brilliant magic.
It would be hard to imagine two musicians better suited to convey the double aspect of the keyboard performer/composer who, in his own estimation "thought too much", and undoubtedly embodied too much feeling according to the naysayers of his day. As towns and cities all over Germany celebrate the 300th anniversary of the fiery intellectual who was the second son of J.S.Bach, considered "the only Bach" at the end of his life, only to disappear from view until rediscovered in the second half of the twentieth century, we were lucky indeed in Victoria to be treated to such an evocation of of C.P. Emanuel Bach's early mastery and promise of things to come by two of his countrymen who met in Germany on a bicycle trip over 30 years ago, deeply influencing each other musically, and performing together at least once very couple of years ever since. On this occasion with the Seattle-based string ensemble, Nouvelle Simphonie, about whom, more later.
This is not the first time I have attended a concert in which the programme was shared between works by both JS and CPE Bach, nor the first time I have found myself enjoying the work of the son just as much, if not occasionally more, than the father. It is the first time though that I have had an inkling of why that should be. Emanuel Bach shared the prodigious keyboard talent of his father - he could sight read any of his keyboard works by the time he was ten. But where his father's analytical brilliance lay in his ability to exploit the infinite structural possibilities of tone and scale in his well-tempered instruments and the mathematical delights of contrapuntal harmony, Emanuel, also a brilliant improviser, was equally drawn to music's power to express with intricate detail and great subtlety a depth of feeling that had suffered an eclipse since dawn of the era of mind enlightened by reason. Like Goethe and many other writers, artists and composers, he was to usher in a reasserted value for sensitivity, emfindsamkeit. The two concerti on Saturday night's programme were composed early in his career, in the years of the births of his first two children, leading me to suspect that the tender joy expressed in them has something to do with he himself becoming a father: Johann Adam, named to honour his grandfather, and Anna Carolina Philippa to honour her grandmother and CP himself.
The concert opened with JS Bach's Suite in B-minor for flute and strings with harpsichord and cello continuo. From the stately and elegant ouverture through a collection of dance forms to the concluding badinerie, Schnoor's light and effortlessly agile touch and bubbling cadences formed a perfect backdrop to Cohan's swaying dance between the strings, his tone seamlessly married to the violins, the softness of his flute emerging in and out of a tapestry of sound in a kind of humorous hide-and-seek. A music so refined, it draws and draws, yet never swamps the senses.
The first of CPE's works, the Harpsichord Concerto in D Minor opened with a furious flurry from the strings before giving way to an exquisitely compelling florescence of sound in the silvery bell tones of the harpsichord, an instrument from Northern Germany with a much softer tone than the crisper, brighter ones favoured in the south, and perhaps more familiar to us. The enormous presence of Mr. Schnoor as he covered the entire instrument with his solo statement, creating a universe of sound, was immediately apparent. In the second movement, un poco andante, the angelic voice of the harpsichord like a promise answering the longing of the viola and violins with an almost unbearable sweetness. The third allegro movement concluding with a sense of joyful anticipation, the spotlight shifting between the harpsichord and the strings with the startling clarity of a pointillist painting.
After the intermission the musicians returned for the second of Emanuel Bach's works, the Concerto for Flute in D MInor. Here the robust quality of the strings in relation to the flute evoked an image of the stoutly protective bud enclosing, and opening to reveal the soft drape of rose or poppy petals. Visually, the tableau including the Puckish dancing of Cohan and the rapt attention as if every note were a longed for gift, of the violist, Steve Creswell only added to the sense of transport offered by the music. The third allegro offered a rhapsodic ode to the joy of flight in an upwelling of apparently unbreathed sound to an outpouring of applause from the audience.
The Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 brought the programme to a close, Cohan's flute flitting here and there like a light in the trees, spume above surges from the violins, while in his opening solo, Schnoor's heightening intensity of pure invention compelled every hair follicle of attention. In the Afetuoso section the violins cut arcs of beautifully mellow sound, while the flute filled cups of ambrosia before developing a more sonorous tone to match the richer, fuller strings. For the final allegro on a rich tapestry of tones and lively dancing, the flute was sometimes a presence, a nuance, a quality, a colour, hiding then emerging to a sublimely confident finish, utterly and quietly assured.
The audience was extremely appreciative, yet such was the virtuosity and technical brilliance of Hans Jürgen Schnoor and Jeffrey Cohan, combined with a spell-binding understatement, I couldn't be quite sure I hadn't dreamed it all.
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