MiV Home
Alix Goolden Performance Hall
February 6, 2016
By way of introduction to this final evening concert for the Pacific Baroque Festival, Countertenor Zachary Windus suggested the program would be "more uplifting" than the darker sonorities of the previous evening which had left some audience members in tears, to which Matthew White, (Artistic Director of Early Music Vancouver, who, happily for us, is moving to Victoria with his family soon) added his own view that darkness, loss and suffering is part of life which music has the power to transform into something beyond the personal immersion in tragedy. After all "the point of music is to connect to the Divine", he said, underscoring the fact that "uplift" can as well mean in the face of grief as at the celebratory festivals and dances of life. As to what to look out for, "notice the genius in the setting of text" he suggested.
For most of the ears present, the programme could well have been called "new music", since not only are these 17th century German composers hardly household names, two at least were unknown to Matthew White himself - an invitation then to relax and be charmed by strangers. Johann Hermann Schein's Suite XVI from his secular collection Banchetto Musicale accomplished just that with the full festival ensemble, (minus the two horns - saved for a telling flourish later on) playing the four dance movements with compelling conviction: the padouana, rich elegant and light, unhurried in its stately dignity; sweeping and circling honey tones in the gagliardia; pure charm in the courente and rippling notes from the organ delivering a beautiful underpinning to the measured grace of the allemande.
Sebastian Knupfer's "Lauda Jerusalem Dominum" introduced both choirs and four soloists to the stage. The sheer joyful lightness of the children's voices, the garland of interwoven elements from the four soloists, featuring a thrillingly deep bass and the infinitely pliable, serpentine flexibility of Dorothee Mield's astonishingly golden voice contributed to a blend as rich as a Christmas cake, producing a storm of approval in the audience. The stage emptied for the Sonata XI for two viols from Johann Schenk's Le Nymphe de Rheno. The somewhat melancholy character of the sound produced by these instruments, and the way they chose to play its three movements, allegro, aria and ciacone, brought to mind, my mind at least, the image of two somewhat mannered ladies having tea. A charming eccentricity gave way to hints of nostalgia in the aria, wistful but never wild, yet by the third movement I was being drawn, in spite of the flickering image of Mrs Marpole and companion in a dusty pink drawing room, into the final loveliness of the chaconne, when all politeness gives way to the sheer pleasure of the treats on the table. In the end, it has been the unique sound of these two solo viols that keeps returning in my post concert musings.
Johann Schelle, noted by a contemporary as a composer who drew listeners "like honeybees", provided in his "Christus, der ist mein Leben" a gorgeous vehicle for a soprano duet from Mields and Rebecca Genge. Together they threw a glorious light, both gold and silver, Mields achieving a resonant fullness in her high notes that was, quite simply, breathtaking.
Samuel Scheidt's Pavan from Ludi Musici, featuring five strings, mixed the delicate melancholy of long bowed opening notes to create an elegiac dance/procession of exquisite delicacy under under the consummate musicianship of the somehow always shining Marc Destrubé - if this had been the path of the dead, then it would certainly have lightened the way.
Franz Tunder's Hosianna dem Davids was the chance for the Children's Choir to really demonstrate their marvellous attention to detail (and to Destrubé's directing bow from time to time in the absence from the stage of their own director, Madeleine Humer) and for their own four soloists to handle their moments with such aplomb. Some would say this choir stole the whole show anyway, but in this case they handled, with ringing clarity all the remarkable tempo changes with astonishing verve.
Back to the simplicity and pure joy of Johann Vierdanck's Sonata a 2 violini - an intricately sparkling, perfect pairing between Destrubŕ and Linda Melsted with such realized intention in the gesture of the phrasing, especially in the finale that it came as no surprise to discover that these two instruments, dating from 1670 and 1685 (if I remember rightly) had probably known each other for a very long time!
Johann Philipp Fortsch was an astonishingly versatile man (physician and diplomat as well as court composer with operatic experience) whose ability to pack a great deal of emotional punch in an efficiently constructed dramatic format makes him the forerunner of much bigger sacred cantatas in the 18th century. The Lament, "Weh denen, die auf Erden wohnen" (woe to those who live on earth) gave hymn tunes to the tenor, colourful narrative passages to the soprano and a robust cheerfulness to the baritone in spite of all the roar and terror in the text. The beautiful ending in the triumph of peace in the face of impending personal death achieved the sense of experience recalled in tranquillity rather than the emotional wringing that this text from Revelation can provoke.
The programme ended with "Wie Schon leuchtet der Morgenstern" from the gifted choral composer Johann Kuhnau who also rose to the challenge of incorporating operatic style, arias, duets and recitative, into the sacred music of his day. Butterfield's tenor pleasingly accompanied by the organ in the opening invocation, or reflected in the sadness of the strings as he contemplates the challenge of divine potential in a human body, is interrupted by the joy of the children's chorus as they burst into a song of praise, underscored by the uplifting two horns. Like these German composers, recovering from Europe's hideously destructive thirty year war in the first half of the seventeenth century, we too are faced with the daily evidence of wars which show no sign of ending, and the soprano duet which breaks into the paradox of the tragedy of divine humanity losing its way with its call to music and friendship, sung with glorious sweetness by Mields and Genge, feeling as necessary now as it must have three and a half half centuries ago. The rousing, full bodied finale brought an extremely appreciative audience to its feet.
Some final comments: the quality of attention and enthusiasm displayed by this audience is a real testament to to the vitality of educated interest and delight in Early Music, to say nothing of the flowering of talent among the musicians of the Pacific Northwest over the last several decades. The notes in the accompanying written programmme are also excellent with one small cavil - to really appreciate the setting of text to music, it would have helped to provide the sung German text, possibly with a summary in English if space is an issue. My only other regret is that I didn't get myself a full festival pass - next year I will know better.
MiV Home