Saturday, March 30, 2024

The 2024 Bach Festival (director: David Shemer) - interest, variety and excellence in Jerusalem and other centres

 

Maestro Paul Goodwin © Yoel Levy

Inclement weather was no deterrent to those people arriving at the Jerusalem International YMCA on March 18th 2024 to see in Bach Festival VIII, an annual festival under the auspices of the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra and directed by JBO founder and music director Prof. David Shemer. Guests were greeted with a glass of red wine and invited to take their seats to the familiar sounds of Prelude in C major from Book 1 of J.S.Bach's Well Tempered Clavier as played on the harpsichord by Jonathan Berk. JBO CEO Gilli Alon welcomed guests to the event, expressing her thanks to YMCA personnel for their help in the project. Her words were followed by Maestro Shemer, who talked of the Bach Festival as having started out as an experiment, then to be established as a permanent fixture in Israel's cultural life. He spoke of the main event of this year's festival - "Drums & Trumpets" - the Secular Cantatas - as featuring two of Bach's less-familiar cantatas, the works being played on period instruments…including early trumpets. Shemer made reference to the JBO's ongoing cooperation with the Bach House (Eisenach, Germany), whose director Dr. Jörg Hansen was present at the opening, once again bringing an exhibition relevant to the theme of the festival from this unique museum in the town of Bach's birth. Present at the Jerusalem Bach Festival for the seventh time, Dr. Hansen spoke of many of Bach's secular cantatas - all composed for weddings, birthdays, name days and funerals – being lost, with only about 25 of them surviving in their entirety. Hansen drew our attention to a display case showing books of poetry of Picander. (Christian Friedrich Henrici, writing under the pen name Picander, was a poet and librettist for many of the cantatas Johann Sebastian Bach composed in Leipzig.)  Performing on a copy of a Duicken harpsichord (Klop, 1983), Jonathan Berk brought the event to a close with a selection of Bach's chorale preludes (one version by Bach's pupil Johann Ludwig Krebs) and an early seldom-heard suite of the master. Berk is presently studying in Graz, Austria. Displaying technical competence, his playing unfolded with a sense of discovery, giving expression to the rich variety of writing found in the preludes, to their complexity and their potential for embellishment and cantabile playing. Both reflective and intense, Berk's delivery attested to the dialogue present between artist and instrument that is elemental to this repertoire.

 

What was most appealing about "Drums & Trumpets" - the Secular Cantatas, the main event of this Bach Festival (attended by this writer on March 20th at the Jerusalem International YMCA) was its distinctive programming. For each of the main festival programs over the years, the Jerusalem Bach Festival has featured several of the larger sacred works - the St. Matthew Passion, the St. John Passion, the Magnificat, to mention just three - but this year's festival presented two of Bach's secular cantatas. Guest conductor was Paul Goodwin (UK), with soloists soprano Keren Motseri (Holland/Israel), countertenor Hamish McLarin (UK), tenor Richard Resch (Germany) and Israeli baritone Guy Pelc. However, the "apéritif" to the cantatas was a feature no less invigorating - a selection of instrumental movements from Bach's Easter Oratorio and from three of the cantatas. With Paul Goodwin at the helm, the JBO instrumentalists gave fresh and vivid expression to these pieces, delighting the audience with the music’s variety of mood and timbral interest, the latter enriched and enlivened by fine wind playing. As to the two cantatas, we unexpectedly found ourselves hearing music familiar to us from other Bach works. Bach the recycler was at it again. "Tönet, ihr Pauken! Erschallet, Trompeten!" (Resound, ye drums! Ring out, ye trumpets!) BWV 214 (Bach reused parts of this cantata a year later for the first- and third cantata of the Christmas Oratorio) was composed in 1733 for the birthday of Maria Josepha, Queen of Poland and Electress of Saxony. Bach had led the Collegium Musicum in the first performance of it at Café Zimmermann in Leipzig that same year. The librettist is unknown. The text's interaction occurs between four allegorical goddesses from Roman- and Greek mythology: Bellona, a Roman goddess of war (Keren Motseri), Pallas, a Greek goddess of wisdom (Hamish McLarin), Irene, a Greek goddess of peace (Richard Resch), and Fama, a Roman goddess of fame (Guy Pelc). Joining them to sing the choruses were Naomi Burla-Levy, Doreen Sassine, Jamil Freij and Roi Witz. Although we today would not recognize the allusions and metaphors referring to the latent political program of the piece (indeed, obscure to anyone but its Saxon audience of 1733), the Bach Festival performance (both soloists and instrumentalists) gave a polished reading of it, bringing to life the musical gestures and verbal descriptions embedded in the text of this dramma per musica. 

 

Apart from the recitatives, "Auf, schmetternde Töne der muntern Trompeten" BWV 207a (Arise, blaring tones of high-spirited trumpets) is a parody on BWV 207, meaning that the original setting - a celebration of the inaugural lecture of a professor of law - was transformed by Bach into an exalted ode to Friedrich August II, praising the virtues of the Elector and referring to the ensuing prosperity of his subjects on the occasion of Friedrich August’s name day. The trumpets and timpani, scored here to add festive colour, energy and joy to the work, are present from the first line and the listener was quick to recognise Brandenburg Concerto No.1 in the opening chorus. With the customary references to ancient antiquity, August is honoured mainly in his capacity as Elector of Saxony, although reference is also made to his Polish kingdom in the final recitative. The performance's fine vocal soloing was met with no-less splendid obbligato playing on the part of JBO players.

 

Bach Festival VIII concluded with "Whom Have I in Heaven but You", an evening of northern German Baroque music, music of composers who had paved the way for Johann Sebastian Bach. Taking place in the agreeable Conference Hall of the Jerusalem YMCA on March 23rd, the event featured tenor Richard Resch (no new face to Israeli concert audiences), violinists Noam Schuss and Yulia Lurye, Sonia Navot (viola da gamba) and David Shemer (organ). Resch referred to this repertoire as music full of feelings - some darker, some brighter in mood - works expressing sadness, faith and hope. The event opened with a full-bodied, sonorous reading of "Herr, wenn ich nur Dich habe" (Whom have I in heaven but You?) from Cantata BuxWV38 of Dietrich Buxtehude. Resch spoke of the aria "Wein, ach wein" (Cry, oh cry), from a Passion by Danish-German organist/violinist/ composer Nicolaus Bruhns, as a piece expressing Peter's disconsolateness at having betrayed Jesus, as a piece embodying the "quintessence of sorrow". Joined by Shemer and Schuss, Resch performed it with profound feeling. Endorsing and reflecting the intense grief intrinsic to the piece, Schuss' eloquent playing gave rise to some splendid ornamenting. Johann Mattheson's oratorio "Der liebreiche und geduldige David" (The affectionate and patient David,1723) was recently rediscovered amongst works lost during World War II (now restored to Hamburg.)  It is set during the elderly King David’s civil war with his estranged son Absalom and climaxes with the king’s lament for his dead son. With organ and viol offering an intimate, reflective setting for the lament, Resch's performance of “Ach Absalom! Mein Sohn” (Oh Absalom! My son!), with its searching, disquieting short pauses, was imposing and heartrending. 

 

As to the instrumental items on the program, the players' diligent reading of two sonatas from Johann Heinrich Schmelzer's "Duodena Selectarum Sonatarum" (Nürnberg, 1659) re-created something of the experience offered to guests at a typical evening of entertainment held at the Habsburg Court. In this, the composer's first large chamber music collection, the viola da gamba is on a par with the violin. From the early 17th century, the Viennese court was under the spell of the Italian style. The Schmelzer sonatas show a wide variety of influences, though the Italian influence is the most apparent. They reflect an age of experimentation and compositional freedom. Similarly, the JBO players' expressive and finely sculpted playing of Sonata Secunda from "Sonatae a 2, 3, 4 e 5 stromenti da arco et altri" (Nürnberg, 1682) of Johann Rosenmüller clearly shows the influence of the years the composer spent in Venice. 

 

Ending on an optimistic note, the artists performed "Redet Untereinander" (Speak among Yourselves), a typical early 18th century North German cantata, composed by Gottfried Philipp Flor. It is thought that J.S.Bach was acquainted with compositions of his father, Christian Flor, during his stay as a student in Lüneburg and may have been influenced by them. Some sources quote Bach as having known the elder Flor personally. The artists took on board the vivid, celebratory canvas of this new year cantata, highlighting its marvellous string writing. Resch gave articulate, vigorous esprit to the text, with its richly descriptive passages. 

 

The YMCA Conference Hall was the ideal venue for this unique program, its lively acoustic calling attention to the timbres of the instruments, the instrumentalists’ splendid playing and to the fresh, warm, easeful flow, the natural resonance of Richard Resch's singing and his deep enquiry into the texts.  



Richard Resch (Martin Lee)

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