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| Photo: Maxim Reider |
“A Christmas Special”, the second concert of the Jerusalem Baroque
Orchestra’s 29th season was an all-Telemann concert marking 250 years of the
composer’s death. This writer attended the event at the Jerusalem International
YMCA on December 6th, 2017. Under the direction of JBO founder and musical
director David Shemer, orchestra and soloists presented little-known works of
Telemann alongside more familiar works - three church cantatas and two
concertos.
In his program notes, Maestro Shemer mentioned the fact that Georg Philipp
Telemann’s oeuvre comprised over 3000 works, his church cantatas alone
numbering more than 1000, with the mind-blowing fact there was no “existing
instrument or chamber ensemble for which Telemann did not write a work” and
that “in all these he displayed complete command ...retaining his high- and
uncompromising standard of composition”.
Subsequent to his posts in Sorau/Silesia and Eisenach, Telemann (1681–1767) held the position of Frankfurt’s ‘Städtischer Musikdirektor’ (i.e.
the city’s musical director) for almost nine years, from 1712 to 1721. With his
sacred and profane music written during these years, he laid the foundation of
his international fame. As his Frankfurt post required him to arrange
church music for Sundays and holidays, he would compose sacred cantatas on a
regular basis. All three cantatas performed at the JBO concert stem from this
Frankfurt period. The program opened with “Weg, nichtige Freuden” (Go away,
fine pleasures) the cantata’s tutti and ensuing arias forming one lilting,
dance-like continuum, taken up by each singer in turn, the timbre of
instrumental scoring indeed more alluring and luminous for its inclusion of
recorders (Drora Bruck, Idit Shemer). “Kommt alle, die ihr traurig
seid” (Come all ye who are sad) from Telemann’s French Cycle, offers more
variety of cantata elements - arias, recitative, chorus and a genuine chorale. Its
message of comfort in times of need was well expressed by the singers, as they
highlighted key words. The final tutti, with its exuberant fugal entries, ended
somewhat enigmatically on the dominant chord, suggesting it would have been
followed by another work or movement. For me, the highlight was Telemann’s
early Frankfurt cantata “Sei getreu bis in den Tod” (Be faithful, even to the
point of death) written when Telemann was still in his twenties. Here,
the composer gives us four arias for the separate voice types, the only tutti
section, opening and concluding the work, sung by all four singers,
guaranteeing better-than-choral ensemble singing. The effect was very intimate
and just right for the meditative quality of the work, which would have been
written for normal occasions of Lutheran worship rather than for festivities.
Highlights were baritone Guy Pelc’s vivid word-painting and the alto aria, its
text sensitively expressed by Avital Dery and joined by the violin obbligato
splendidly shaped and ornamented by Noam Schuss and Hillel Sherman’s stirring
and involving performance of the final aria:
'O God, grant that my soul remains true to Thee for ever,
So that when that awesome day summons me to rise from the grave’s
pit,
My eyes will be able to see thy Divine Face in the sapphire-like heavens.’
Young soprano Adaya Peled’s singing is informed and precise. Her performance
of “Contemptible world”, with its “vain pleasures”, “pain and grief”
might have benefitted from more emotional- and vocal intensity.
Telemann’s Concerto for three violins, strings and b.c. in F-major,
following the Vivaldian model, comes from the second production of Telemann’s
“Tafelmusik” (or “Musique de Table”) , the endorsement of Telemann’s conception
of ‘mixed taste’, in which elements of Italian, French and German musical
styles come together with the influence of the street music of Poland and
Silesia. In all three movements Telemann interweaves the virtuosity of the
single violin with the variety of colours he conjures up from the three playing
together, structurally held together by the ripieno passages for the full
string section. The audience at the Jerusalem YMCA auditorium was witness to how
each gesture was played out with subtlety and intelligence and handed on by
violinists Noam Schuss, Dafna Ravid and Rachel Ringelstein. Theirs is the art
of listening, balance and good taste, the artists’ individuality nevertheless
emerging in their playing. Definitely a performance to be observed, not just
heard.
If Telemann’s Concerto for flute and recorder in E-minor, the only one of
its kind, is a crowd-pleaser, there is every justification for the fact.
There was a conspicuous number of recorder players in the Jerusalem audience,
professional and amateur players, all probably aware of Telemann’s own
proficiency on the recorder and the resulting technical challenges in his many
works written for the instrument. If Johann Mattheson’s description of the
scale of E-minor as “deep-thinking, grieved and sad” is accurate, Drora Bruck
(recorder) and Idit Shemer’s (Baroque flute) performance of the opening Largo,
with its sensibilité and elegant shaping of phrases, including some splendid
ornamentation, suited the concept. The artists achieved an impressive blend of
sound, engaging in the fine dialogue of the second movement (at times
overshadowed by the orchestra) then presenting the fragility and intimacy of
the third movement, an E-major Largo. The secret is eye contact. The ebullient
and genial stomping Polish rondo dance of the last movement, with its
octave- and insistent bass notes, allowed players and audience to let their
hair down, sending all home with the devil-may-care joy of the eastern European
folk dance.
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