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Church of St. John the Divine
December 7, 2016
Until the Twentieth Century's Cult of Originality achieved critical mass, composers felt little or no compunction about plundering their own "back catalogue" for "new" works, or, indeed, about arranging the music of others.
Johann Sebastian Bach was no exception: his B minor Mass contains little, if any, new music and perhaps his best-known arrangement is his Concerto for Four Keyboards BWV1065, a relatively straightforward — at least orchestrally — transcription of Vivaldi's Concerto for Four Violins, Op.3 No.10 (one of several transcriptions he made of Vivaldi's Op.3).
So it is highly unlikely that Bach would have found anything to complain about regarding Wednesday's Victoria Bach Ensemble programme, even though it contained two arrangements by Music Director Michael Drislane and one reconstruction of a lost original (later transcribed by Bach himself — this can get complicated and makes the "version problem" of Bruckner's symphonies look simple).
Nor do I imagine that Bach would be offended by the fact that the very opening piece — the fourth movement chorale ("Zion hört die Wächter singen") from the Cantata "Wachet auf, ruft uns die stimme", BWV140 — utilised the trumpet of David Barss rather than a tenor voice to carry the melody. Or that I learned the piece through the version by The Swingle Singers over half a century ago. (In defence of which, I adduce Sir John Eliot Gardiner's remark, of the cantata's opening movement, that "if anyone in the posh world of classical music ever doubted that JS Bach could also be considered the father of jazz, here is the proof".)
The accompaniment which runs throughout this chorale is, to my mind, one of the most infectiously beautiful ever devised, by anyone, and Bach, while not exactly throwing it away, was so prolific that he could afford to use it merely to bolster the chorale melody, which was actually composed by another hand.
While Barss, obviously, could not give us the text, his playing brought a decided nobility to the music; not to mention a nice line in trills. The accompaniment, light and airy, also featured what I believe to have been the only intonational insecurity of the evening.
Michael Drislane is far from the first person to arrange the "Goldberg" Variations; Dmitri Sitkovetsky's version for string trio is well-known; Ferrucio Busoni's rather less well-known version for piano solo not only truncates the work significantly, it also resequences much of it.
So Drislane's Goldberg Suite for trumpet and strings, which consisted of the opening aria along with variations one, seven, eight and thirty (the quodlibet) is hardly without precedent.
Indeed, the arrangement worked extremely well, with Barss's beautifully rounded tone suiting the aria perfectly. Variation one was for strings only, but the trumpet returned for the, clearly extremely challenging, variation seven. Perhaps the standout movement was the final variation, in which Drislane achieved the arranger's ultimate trick of making it sound like the original of which Bach's keyboard version must have been the arrangement.
It was all played with style and spirit and I can only hope that Drislane will arrange more, if not all, of the Goldbergs.
The Trio Sonata for two violins and continuo is a reconstruction by Hans Eppstein of BWV1039 (for two flutes and continuo), which, together with BWV1027 (a sonata for viola da gamba and harpsichord) is believed to be an arrangement, by Bach, of a common lost original. (See, I told you this got complicated.)
This was excellently performed by Kathryn Doknjas and Tyson Doknjas with continuo from Rosanna Butterfield and Drislane. The opening adagio was particularly elegant, the succeeding allegro lively, while the second adagio, with a similar feel to Vivaldi's Winter, temporarily brought a chill into the church from outside, before the final, exuberant, presto enlivened with running cello passagework.
While certainly no purist when it comes to the instruments on which Bach is played, I do think that Drislane's decision to play the D minor Keyboard Concerto, BWV1052, might have been a miscalculation. Balancing a modern piano against a one-to-a-part accompaniment was always going to be a gamble and, frankly, I don't think it paid off. Despite some fine playing from all concerned — and some dazzling passagework from Drislane — there were too many places in which, while the string players could clearly be seen, they might just as well have been playing "air violin" for all that one could hear.
Things got "interesting" again after the interval, with Drislane's arrangement of the third gamba sonata, BWV1029, as a trio sonata for violin and viola. (Ulrich Siegele has suggested that BWV started life as a concerto, not sonata, possibly for two transverse flutes, although not everybody agrees. I am agnostic on the matter.)
The opening movement is certainly energetic enough — I even wondered in my notes whether it had started life as a concerto, clearly Siegele and I are singing from the same hymn sheet — and was played appropriately. The adagio was lovely, but Barry Leung's viola tended to be overbalanced at times and, despite the liveliness of the finale, I was not completely convinced that the arrangement as a whole worked.
Finally, an undisputed, unarranged JSB original, the cantata "Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen", BWV51, in which the ensemble were joined by soprano Nancy Washeim.
According to Bach scholar Klaus Hofmann the cantata, with its unique scoring for soprano and trumpet, exhibits "overflowing jubilation and radiant beauty".
Which is about as accurate a description of Wednesday's performance as one could wish for. The blending of Washeim's and Barss's exquisite lines was ravishing in the first and last movements. The second movement, an accompanied recitative, featured a fine cello continuo; the third movement aria was notable for Washeim's soaring vocals; the fourth movement chorale featured another wonderfully bouncy accompaniment, reminiscent of "Wachet auf"; and the final, fugal "Alleluia!" ended the evening on a suitably joyous note.
The Victoria Bach Ensemble may not perform with the frequency of some other groups, otherwise they have yet to disappoint me.
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