Bach in Italy - Ensemble PHOENIX (director Myrna Herzog) performs works of J.S.Bach and Italian composers at the Eden-Tamir Music Center, Jerusalem

Myrna Herzog,Tali Goldberg,Marina Minkin,Noam Schuss,Yulia Lurye (© Yoel Levy)

 

Taking place at the Eden-Tamir Music Center, Ein Kerem, Jerusalem on May 10th 2024, "Bach in Italy", performed by members of Ensemble PHOENIX, together with its founder/director Dr. Myrna Herzog, was a celebration of the 25 years of this ensemble's existence.

 

It is a fact that such Baroque masters as Schütz, Froberger, Muffat, Handel and Hasse crossed the Alps to imbibe in the world of Italian music, its spirit and its secrets. Yet the composer who most fully perceived the Italian style was Johann Sebastian Bach, who had never even set foot in Italy. This he achieved through studying scores of Italian composers as of his childhood, beginning with the transcribing of concertos by Vivaldi and Marcello and then, through taking himself on a vivid (virtual) journey from Vivaldi’s Venice to Frescobaldi’s Rome. Bach’s transcriptions show an absolute technical mastery that was unprecedented at the time. Under its founder and director, Myrna Herzog, Ensemble PHOENIX, playing on period instruments, took the audience at the Eden-Tamir Music Center on such a journey. Performing the works were Noam Schuss and Tali Goldberg (violin), Yulia Lurye (viola), Marina Minkin (harpsichord) and Myrna Herzog (viola da gamba).

 

The event opened with Trio Sonata in B minor, Op.3 No.4 by Arcangelo Corelli, a work dating from the 1680s. Performing the "church sonata" (the term somewhat of a misnomer), the artists' lucid, intuitive playing highlighted the composer's idiomatic string writing, carried out with the dignity associated with the noble Roman academies for which the music was intended. Bach's Fugue in B minor on a Theme of Corelli probably dates from the early years of his Weimar period (1708-1717), during which he was the court organist in the service of the Duke of Sachsen-Weimar. Being of the canzona genre, the subjects are drawn from the second movement (Vivace) of the Corelli work that opened the concert. Adding a fourth part and greatly elaborating the fugal character, Bach clearly sought possibilities to align Corelli’s joie-de-vivre with the strict rules of German organ music, hence, its more serious (indeed, less Italianate) demeanour. With Bach's writing growing somewhat more animated by the brighter second half of the piece, the PHOENIX performance (arr. Myrna Herzog) traced the work's increasing, (however, subtly wrought) sense of tension. With articulate exposure of  each timbre, each voice, indeed, the clear enunciation of each inner voice, the listener was aware of the string quartet "hierarchy" of sound and no less of Bach's brilliantly-crafted fugal writing.

 

Bach’s works in variation form are few and far between. The "Aria variata alla maniera italiana in A minor", BWV 989 (Air varied in the Italian manner) is a keyboard work that was composed around 1709. It develops a theme by Domenico Zipoli (a composer known beyond the borders of Italy) in a series of ten variations (each in binary form). More proof of Bach's close study of contemporary Italian music (of Vivaldi, in particular) in the early years of his tenure as organist/concertmaster for the Duke of Weimar, the "Aria variata alla maniera italiana", a piece laced with invention and virtuosity, is the master's own take on the Italian style. Bach (an incurable recycler himself) would surely have delighted in the many arrangements that now exist of the work... including one for carillon! In Herzog's vivid setting for the specific ensemble for this event, she scores each section for a different combination of the instruments at hand, mixing timbres and colours, yet reminding us of the piece's genesis with several moments (including the whole of Var.V) devoted to the harpsichord alone. The artists' reading of the Aria featured some fine solo playing, pleasing embellishments, plenty of dialogue, imitation and playful gestures, to conclude in a majestic, cantabile fashion.

 

Another seldom-performed work on these shores is J.S.Bach's " Capriccio sopra la lontananza del suo fratello dilettissimo" (Capriccio on the departure of a beloved brother) BWV 992, from the composer's many single pieces that bear a diversity of titles. It was written at age 19, possibly to mark his brother Johann Jacob leaving to become an oboist in the army of Charles XII in Sweden (set in the key of B-flat major, it may refer to the family's name - "B" in German, B-flat in English); or it might have been intended as a farewell gesture to a friend. Bach's only piece of programme music (programmatic works of a kind being popular at the time) the style shows a different side of the great polyphonist. In its six short and imaginatively-titled movements, Myrna Herzog's setting of Bach's delightful and exquisitely-crafted keyboard piece creates a vivid canvas, its stage furnished with such associations as the postal coach's horn but also with a gamut of emotions. In the lamenting Adagissimo movement (a passacaglia originally in the "prophetic" key of F minor, here in C minor) Schuss and Herzog evoke a sense of grief at the young man's imminent departure, as the movement concludes in the minimal gestures of just a few brush strokes.

 

Then to Trio Sonata Op.1 No.8 of Tomaso Albinoni. Albinoni's Op.1 collection was published in Venice in 1694, when the composer was 23 years old (at which time, he referred to himself as an "amateur Venetian violinist".) The PHOENIX artists' playing conveyed lucidity, offered tasteful ornamenting, the appealing delivery of melodies and melodic shaping and the addressing of dissonance… performance displaying a sense of shared purpose. The esteem in which Albinoni's instrumental music was held is reflected in the fact that J.S.Bach borrowed certain themes from Op.1 as subjects for a number of his fugues, one such being the Fugue in B minor BWV 951, which  is based on thematic material from the 2nd movement (Allegro) of the above Albinoni trio sonata. Marina Minkin gave a dedicated and informed performance of the fugue (2nd version), an extensive work, whose richly balanced harmonic plan and formal- and tonal refinement would point to the fact that it belongs to the composer's second decade of keyboard compositions.    

 

Once again, the experience acquired by Bach through his careful transcriptions is reflected in the Italian Concerto, a work that might be defined as a keyboard arrangement of a virtual and imaginary Italian orchestral model. The Italian Concerto is unique among Johann Sebastian’s compositions, being a concerto in the Italian style for solo keyboard, without orchestra. Originally titled "Concerto nach Italiænischen Gusto" (Concerto in the Italian taste) in F major, BWV 971, the three-movement work, composed for two-manual harpsichord solo, was published in 1735 as the first half of Clavier-Übung II. One of Bach's most loved works, it has served as the blueprint for many settings, among them being for harp, for two harps, for piano, for orchestra, flute and alto flute, flute and piano, string quartet, three recorders, soprano saxophone and piano and for saxophone quartet. The arrangement made by Myrna Herzog and Marina Minkin endorses the twofold task Bach had set himself -  that of simulating the two contrasting ensemble forces of the concerto grosso model and presenting the exuberant spirit of the Italian model. (Supporting the former, Bach supplied many indications for piano and forte dynamics.) The PHOENIX setting calls into play contrasting string- and harpsichord textures and gestures, bringing out voices, indeed, inviting the harpsichord to be the solo instrument in its own concerto. To the pared-back ostinato accompaniment, Noam Schuss' playing of the D-minor slow movement, so string-like in its lengthy melodic contour, was wonderfully sculpted and moving. 

Invariably well researched and of a high artistic standard, PHOENIX performances never fail to introduce the listening public to works rarely (or never before) heard here. As to  how Bach went about familiarizing himself with Italian music (the thread running through the "Bach in Italy" concert) perhaps today's music education institutions should encourage students to find the time and patience to experience his methods. 

 

As Myrna Herzog will presently be returning to Brazil, this was Ensemble PHOENIX' last concert in the present format of four to eight programs a year. Over the last 32 years, Dr. Herzog's contribution to the Israeli early music scene has been immense, as has been her teaching of the viola da gamba. Concert-goers will be pleased to know that Dr. Herzog will lead annual performances of Ensemble PHOENIX on Israeli concert platforms in the future.