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Burst of passion concludes festival
Northwest
Bach Festival Saturday at St. Augustine Church
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Travis
Rivers, correspondent
February 12, 2006
The
Northwest Bach Festival ended its 28th season in the
roar of J.S. Bach's most famous organ work Saturday.
Organist
James David Christie, nursing a hand injury sustained
in a recent fall, brought a virtuoso's fire to Bach's
"Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" at the conclusion
of his recital at St. Augustine.
Christie
has remained a favorite of Bach Festival audiences
since he joined the festival roster in 1997.
His
performances have combined an intellectual's grasp
of the way music works with a showman's wit and flair.
The program Christie chose was a showcase of 17th-
and 18th-century works whose structure is based on
variations over a repeated bass line, a technique
beloved of baroque composers in pieces called chaconne
or ciaconna, and passacaglia or passacaille.
The
organist – collaborating with Spokane musicians
soprano Darnelle Preston, violinists Kelly Farris
and Misha Rosenker, violist Tana Bland and cellist
Helen Byrne – showed the expressive range the
composer could coax.
Besides
the concluding "Toccata and Fugue," Christie
included another inescapably popular baroque work,
Johann Pachelbel's "Canon in D," coupled
with its not-so-well-known companion piece, "Gigue."
"I
don't know who decided to call it a 'canon,' "
Christie said after the concert. "It's really
a chaconne, and it's a shame that people don't get
to hear the 'Gigue' more often. They belong together."
Christie,
Farris, Rosenker, Bland and Byrne gave a formal lilt
to the famous "Canon" before breaking into
the "Gigue" that clearly betrayed its folk
origins in the Irish jig.
Preston
lent her light and flexible soprano to the ornamented
lines of Dietrich Buxtehude's solo motet "Herr
wenn ich nur dich hab" and to Henry Purcell's
"Now That the Sun has Veiled His Light."
Of
the remaining works on Saturday's program, my favorites
were two sharply contrasting pieces: a blissfully
pastoral "Ciaconna in F Minor" by Pachelbel
and a colorful, highly decorated "Ciaconna in
B-flat Major" by J.S. Bach's cousin John Bernhard
Bach.
Christie
showed the peaceful character of the St. Augustine
organ's flute stops in the Pachelbel work and the
instrument's colorful (sometimes humorous sounding)
reeds in the Bernhard Bach.
Recent
temperature and humidity changes made the organ misbehave
a few times during the performance, giving a Stravinskian
touch with notes that stuck and others that were alarmingly
out of tune.
Make
no mistake, though, the St. Augustine organ is a fine
instrument, and Christie's performance on it showed
its power of expression.
Christie
had intended to end Saturday's recital with Bach's
powerful but taxing "Passacaglia in C Minor,"
but his hand injury precluded it.
"If
I'm invited back next year," he told the audience,
"it will be the first thing on my program."
It
will be worth the wait.
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Bach's range brought vividly to life
Northwest
Bach Festival Tuesday and Friday at The Davenport
Hotel
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Travis
Rivers, correspondent
February 5, 2006
The
28th annual Northwest Bach Festival continued this
week with two concerts that provided excellent Bach
performances and insights into the Bach era, with
some surprises by his contemporaries and predecessors.
Those
who imagine Bach's music to be essays in music's ingenious
mechanics were doubtless surprised Tuesday by the
engaging warmth that violinist Tracy Dunlop and harpsichordist
Mark Kroll brought to Bach's "Sonata in A major
for Violin and Harpsichord" (BWV 1015). The two
brought freshness and vigor to the sonata's fast movements.
Even more striking, though, was the tenderness with
which Dunlop's violin floated over the soft staccato
of Kroll's harpsichord in the work's Andante.
On the same program was viola da gambist Margriet
Tindemans' adaptation of Bach's "Partita in E
minor for Solo Flute" (BWV 1013). The silvery
lightness of the viola da gamba's sound proved ideal
for the Partita's four movements. Though the movements
have the names of baroque dances, they seem to be
more meditations on dancing rather than showing the
physical act of movement.
But
Friday, Tindemans and Kroll demonstrated just how
physical baroque dances can be. Their performance
of Friday's concert finale, Georg Philipp Telemann's
"Sonata in A minor," a showy exhibition
of spins and leaps, had the same exuberant energy
as the film "Strictly Ballroom."
Tuesday,
Kroll played what is probably the earliest surviving
large-scale work by Bach, the infrequently performed,
six-movement "Capriccio on the Departure of a
Beloved Brother" (BWV 992). Kroll showed the
teenage Bach capable of pathos in the work's lament
and humor in its final fugue, a fugue teasingly based
on the call of the horn from the carriage on which
the beloved brother departs.
Casual
listeners often think of the harpsichord as inexpressive.
But throughout these Bach Festival performances, Kroll
has shown otherwise. Most impressive was his performance
Friday of four sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti. Their
emotional range was surprising – pungent dissonances
biting as a flamenco guitar, startling pauses that
would have brought a smile to Haydn or Beethoven,
and the bustling energy in unremitting showers of
fast notes. And these were only a few items in Scarlatti's
expressive vocabulary that Kroll's performances explored.
Cellist
John Marshall gave festival audiences a tour through
the growth of cello playing, easily navigating the
awkward leaps of Benedetto Marcello's "Sonata
in G minor" Tuesday and giving continuity to
the patchwork design of Domenico Gabrielli's "Three
Ricerare" on Friday. But greater by far was Marshall's
deeply engaged performance of Bach's "Fifth Cello
Suite." All six of these suites summarize the
cello techniques of Bach's time yet show how a single
melodic line can serve up great expressive richness.
I will cite only examples: the longing tension as
adjacent notes collide in the Sarabande contrasted
with the joyous glee in the skips and string crossings
in the Allegro of the opening Prelude.
The
audiences for the first two Bach Festival performances
were considerably less than capacity. So it was a
pleasure for both audience and performers to be present
in a standing-room-only crowd for Friday's performance
in the Davenport Hotel's Elizabethan Room. The performances
at all three concerts deserved no less.
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Bach Festival opens with encore-worthy show
Northwest Bach Festival Sunday at The
Davenport Hotel
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Travis
Rivers, correspondent
January 30, 2006
The
28th Northwest Bach Festival took off in high spirits
in the Davenport Hotel's Marie Antoinette Room on
Sunday afternoon with or without the music of J.S.
Bach (more about that later).
For
such high spirits to come across to the audience,
the performers need to be in a festive mood. And Sunday's
quartet of performers – violinists Misha Rosenker
and Kelly Farris, viola da gambist Margriet Tindemans,
and harpsichordist Mark Kroll – clearly had
a good time in one another's company.
Rosenker, the newcomer to this year's festival, has
a boyish, mischievous look about him that belies phenomenal
technique and fine musicianship. He is clearly a welcome
addition to the festival roster and to Spokane's musical
community.
The
afternoon began in Italian with a Spanish accent as
Farris, Tindemans and Kroll played Domenico Scarlatti's
"Sonata in D minor for Violin and basso continuo."
Scarlatti was Italian, the son of a famous opera composer,
who grew up in Spanish-governed Naples and spent most
of his career at the royal courts of Portugal and
Spain. Though famous for his more than 500 sonatas
for solo harpsichord, Scarlatti also wrote a handful
of sonatas for violin with harpsichord and a bass
instrument.
Farris
and his partners brought out the tart rhythmic spiciness
that Scarlatti's biographer Ralph Kirkpartick called
"the onions, garlic and peppers" in his
music.
Rosenker
joined Farris, Tindemans and Kroll for the lighthearted
but cumbersomely titled "Deuxieme Recreation
de Musique d'une execution facile" by Jean-Marie
Leclair. The performers dealt with Leclair's musical
sport like a game of badminton doubles as short musical
motifs flew from one performer to the other. The "Badinage"
movement seemed only a step or two away from a hoe-down.
The
four performers addressed more serious business in
Francois Couperin's "La Francaise." The
work opens with respectful tribute by its French composer
to the Italian Archangelo Corelli. Couperin follows
his imitation of a Corelli-style sonata with seven
very French dances, their melodies organized in highly
ornamented short sentences. It was easy to hear why
J.S. Bach was a great admirer of Couperin, though
their musical language is as different as the crisp
clarity of French is from the rambling complexity
of German.
The
program's final work was of debatable origin, "Trio
Sonata in C major," once thought to be by Bach.
Most scholars now think it is the work of J.G. Goldberg.
Whether Goldberg was a pupil of Bach is a matter of
debate.
Farris,
Rosenker, Tindemans and Kroll played the work as though
there were no doubt of its Bachian credentials. They
brought an easy clarity to the fugue of the second
movement and a witty liveliness to its final gigue.
The
four returned to the stage for an encore, Leclair's
"Le Tambourin," a work that showed the 18th
century Frenchman's inclination to country fiddling
as the "Deuxieme Recreation" heard earlier
in the evening.
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Handel's
'Messiah' expressive, intimate, a holiday joy to hear
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Travis Rivers, Correspondent
December 3, 2005
Connoisseur
Concerts began it's Northwest Bach Festival early
this year, and not with a work by Bach, either. Handel's
"Messiah" was given a glowing performance
Friday night at First Presbyterian Church. Spokane
audiences have learned to expect a fresh view of anything
under Gunther Schuller's baton, and Friday's "Messiah"
was filled with Schuller's revelations.
Schuller
was abetted by a splendid quartet of guest soloists
and of local musicians and choristers. What was most
striking early in the performance was how carefully
Schuller weighed the solemn and the light-hearted
elements in this work, something that was immediately
evident in the opening instrumental "Sinfony"
(as Handel originally referred to the work's overture).
The majesty of Handel's stately rhythms was succeeded
by a dance-like allegro with the spice of ornamental
figures Handel would have expected of his own orchestra.
Tenor
Rockland Osgood set the tone for the vocal aspects
of the performance with his opening accompanied recitative,
"Comfort ye, my people." Every word of the
text could be easily understood, a characteristic
that remained true not only in the solo numbers but
in the choruses, as well. Charles Jennens' libretto
for "Messiah" is a masterpiece made up of
passages from the Bible, but it is rare that all those
words remain clear even in Handel's most complicated
musical textures.
"Messiah"
is a contemplative work rather than a drama with specific
characters - very unusual in oratorios. But there
is plenty of dramatically expressive music. And Friday's
soloists were a wonderfully expressive lot. From the
graceful agility of soprano Janet Brown in pieces
such as "Rejoice greatly" and "He shall
feed his flock," to the thunderous rage of bass-baritone
James Maddalena in "Why do the nations so furiously
rage together" or Osgood in "Thou shalt
break them in pieces."
Mezzo-soprano
Barbara Rearick spilled out her own rage in "But
who may abide the day of His coming," but Rearick's
tenderness in "He was despised" was even
more deeply moving.
Since
Schuller used an orchestra and chorus of about two
dozen performers each, the performance group brought
a very much more intimate feeling to this oratorio
that has been subjected too often to the "cast
of thousands" treatment. Particularly impressive
were the fast-moving choruses such as "His yoke
is easy" and "All we like sheep have gone
astray." Such refreshing delicacy made the impact
much greater in such solemn choruses as "Behold
the Lamb of God" and the angry ones such as "Let
us break their bonds asunder."
By
design or coincidence, the choice of First Presbyterian
Church for this "Messiah" performance matched
almost exactly the size of Neale's Music Hall in Dublin,
where "Messiah" was first heard. Both places
accommodate an audience of about 600. It was unfortunate
that there were empty seats on Friday.
Schuller
did not break any speed records in Friday's performance
in the way some conductors claiming to be committed
to historical performance practice. But he did find
the variety of expression that Handel brought to the
biblical text Jennens chose - the way Handel's music
shows contrasts of darkness and light, heavy burdens
made light, and even references to the crucifixion
and the resurrection. For me those contrasts are the
keys to this work rather than a matter of speed or
volume.
I
sadly confess that I missed most of Part III of this
performance. Had I not done so, you would not be reading
these words. But my advice is: Hear this "Messiah"
all the way through tonight, if you missed any or
all of it Friday.
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