"Dresden & London - The Golden Age". The Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra led by Noam Schuss. Soloists: Noam Schuss (violin), soprano Einat Aronstein

 

Noam Schuss (jbo.co.il)

Einat Aronstein (www.einataronstein.com)

In "Dresden & London - The Golden Age". Concert No.5 of the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra's 37th subscription series on May 3rd 2026, at the Jerusalem International YMCA, JBO concertmaster Noam Schuss both led and soloed. She also provided the audience with some interesting background information, explaining the Dresden-London connections as to  composers and works on the program. We heard soprano Einat Aronstein performing music of Handel. At the harpsichord and organ was JBO founder and music director Prof. David Shemer.

 

The concert opened with Francesco Geminiani's Concerto Grosso No.7 in D minor after Corelli's Violin Sonata No.5. Vibrant and attractively ornamented, the performance brought out the music's variety of forms and colours, its musical language straddling the 17th- and 18th centuries. The JBO's playing was exuberant and moving, with Geminiani's choice and exploration of emotions remaining accessible to today's audiences. And here was the first strand of the connection between works on the program. Having studied under the celebrated Corelli, Geminiani moved to England in 1714, where his brilliant violin playing immediately met with great success, winning him much support from the aristocracy and leading figures at the Royal Court. There, he was invited to play the violin before George I, accompanied at the harpsichord by Handel himself.

 

Born in 1667 in Hanover, Antonio Lotti was a major opera composer of his time, reaching a high point when his operas inaugurated the opera house in Dresden. In 1717, Lotti took his wife, noted soprano Santa Stella, castrati Senesino and Matteo Berselli, the bass Giuseppi Boschi and a complete opera troupe to Dresden. There, Teofane, the composer's 23rd opera, formed part of the sumptuous wedding celebrations of Crown Prince Friedrich Augustus and Maria Josepha, Archduchess of Austria. The new 2000-seat opera house was built for the occasion. Another connection: Handel attended a performance of Teofane in Dresden, then taking the libretto back with him as the basis for his opera Ottone.  The JBO musicians put together a small selection of melodies from Teofane, just enough to whet the audience's appetite to hear the complete work.

 

And to Bach’s celebrated Orchestral Suite No.2 in A minor after BWV 1067…but in a less familiar setting to most of the audience. This was the first time the original violin version (reconstructed by Joshua Rifkin) was performed in Israel. Schuss led and soloed in this setting for violin solo. It was for the audience to undertake the task of putting aside the very familiar sound world of Suite No.2, in which many a flute soloist has been required to prove his worth with no respite in a work opening in the 17th-century Lully style, to close with the extremely galant final section. Known for her fine solo playing and distinctive good taste, Schuss took fellow players and audience through the work with elegance, vision and attention to fine detail. I imagine I was not the only person at the YMCA auditorium missing the sound of the traverse flute contending with the high-spirited Badinerie.

 

The program featured soprano Einat Aronstein in a selection of G.F.Handel's vocal masterpieces. She performed two arias from Handel's opera seria Radamisto - the subdued tragedy imbued in "Qual nave smarrita" (The vessel storm-driven) and the anguished "Barbari! Partiro" (Barbarian! I will leave). Radamisto was first performed at the King's Theatre, London in April 1720, a performance attended by King George I and his son, the Prince of Wales. One of Handel's most substantial and elaborate Latin motets, Silete venti (Silence, ye winds) was also probably composed in London. Aronstein delivered the devotional work with appropriate, rapt intensity, her voice even and pure, as she engaged in the careful use of vibrato to impart urgency, her diction precise. Unmannered, unforced and warm, her singing of the motet displayed refinement and technical ease in all registers. Aronstein, Schuss and the JBO string players highlighted the unmistakable dignity of Handel's music.

 

A concert of excellent performance and interest, it was splendidly led by Noam Schuss.  

 

Bach à Deux Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Trio Sonatas. A new recording in which Emer Buckley and Jochewed Schwarz - DuoChord - perform these works on two harpsichords

 

 

Much of the interest in works of C.P.E.Bach, the fifth child and second surviving son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Maria Barbara Bach, revolves around a certain number of compositions for solo keyboard and his orchestral works. His vocal works and a large part of his chamber music have received surprisingly little attention. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714–1788), a renowned keyboard player himself, was an extremely prolific composer, enjoying a prestigious reputation during his lifetime, with the result that his music became known far and wide. Unlike his father Johann Sebastian, who primarily concentrated on sacred vocal settings for the church, Emanuel, unburdened by cantorial responsibility, composed mostly chamber music for the court. He was particularly attracted to the trio sonata form, to which he devoted some of his finest writing. Highly experimental, composed at a time of change, these works span from the Baroque trio sonata model to the accompanied keyboard sonata, to the Classical keyboard trio…and beyond!  As to the trio sonatas written in a style closer to that of Johann Sebastian, C.P.E. revisited and revised those later in his life in order to distance himself from the Baroque style as much as possible, his own approach becoming stylistically more akin to the lighter, more florid manner of his father’s contemporary, G.P. Telemann.  Indeed, it is in his trio sonatas, now written in a lighter style, free from the complex counterpoint and harmony of his father and independent of contemporary fashions, that we follow Carl Philipp Emanuel developing his own style. Some sonatas are revisions of older compositions. Most of the originals are lost. Indeed, in a letter from 1786, Emanuel wrote that he had burnt a large number of older compositions. Concurrent with revising some early trio sonatas (in the 1740’s, when in Berlin, in the employ of Frederick the Great) he composed some new trios which were much more personal in style and clearly different from his older pieces. Performing on two harpsichords, "Bach à Deux Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Trio Sonatas", DuoChord artists Emer Buckley and Jochewed Schwarz perform a representative selection of these unique works, offering examples of earlier- and later trio sonatas.

 

Trio sonatas Wq71 and 72, as well as Wq143, performed here, were written in 1731 when Emanuel was 17, dating back to the years of study with his father. Emanuel revised them in 1746 and 1747. They exhibit his remarkable creative will, such as in the placement of sudden pauses, the use of surprising harmonic successions, melodic embellishments, continuous transformation of a particular motif and abrupt dynamic transitions. Schwarz and Buckley's playing calls attention to J.S.Bach's influence on the works, at the same time, giving expression to Emanuel's typical fluidity of style, contrasting ideas, hearty dance rhythms and introspective slow movements. The artists' inclusion of ornamentation (some written out, some their own) adds much allure to their playing. The full-blown distinctive stylistic hallmarks of the C.P.E Bach style – the language of feeling, the essence of the north German aesthetic of Empfindsamkeit, with the application of the principles of rhetoric in his works and new ventures into the realm of harmony is obvious in the four Sonatas of Wq75-78. Here was music that catered to a new public eager for personal expression. Performing Trio Sonata in C minor Wq78 (1763), Buckley and Schwarz take on  board its conversational dialogue and the composer's personal idiom with its stylistic daring. They maintain the intensity of the large opening Allegro moderato with vibrancy and feeling, weaving the Adagio's different wandering melody and chordal motif elements into one entity of poignancy, then to give a fiery, vigorous rendering of the challenging Presto, a movement wrought of long, dovetailed phrases. Their affection for the music is evident throughout.

 

And no less affection filters through the artists' reading of Trio Sonata in D-major Wq151 (1747), originally scored for flute, violin and continuo. Schwarz and Buckley's playing of the opening Allegro is exciting, as they maintain the tension of its lively course throughout, to be followed by a well-disposed, finely balanced reading of the Largo and culminating with the joyful, playful energy they infuse into the final Allegro. Wq162 in E major (1749) marks a particularly exemplary case of Emanuel's mature sonata style and of the fact that he had, indeed, discarded any and every concession to the then-ruling musical taste, yet still retaining his ability to compose under the restraints of the court. Buckley and Schwarz's playing addresses the "otherness" of C.P.E's personal expression, from the Allegretto's unpredicted twists and turns, through the chromatic odyssey of the Allegro Di Molto and winding up with the infectious mirth and cheerfulness of the Allegro Assai.

 

In his Essay on the True Art of Playing a Keyboard Instrument (1778), C.P.E. Bach writes: “Play from the soul, not like a trained bird! …. A musician cannot move others unless he too is moved…" Jochewed Schwarz and Emer Buckley's articulate playing of Bach's trio sonatas is bold, articulate, tasteful, intelligent and discerning. It endorses the growing importance of the composer's personal feelings and emotions, displays his light, florid and imaginative style and fulfills the music's call for opulent embellishment. Engaging their undeniable technical prowess, the artists' playing invites the listener to join them on this journey through Bach's array of shifting moods, their performance reactive, conversational and moving.

 

"Bach à Deux Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Trio Sonatas" was recorded at the Paris atelier of Reinhard von Nagel in 2023. Playing from the online edition of the Complete Works of C.P.E.Bach, the artists perform on two double-manual harpsichords built by Reinhard von Nagel, each instrument reflecting a distinct historical model and sound world. One is after an instrument by Christian Kroll, a German-born maker active in Lyon in the 1770s; it offers a clear, bright and slightly incisive sound. The other, inspired by two early 18th-century instruments by the German builder Michael Mietke, features a warmer, rounder tone and a more blended resonance. Together, the instruments create subtle contrast of colour and character, shaping the dialogue between the two parts.

Jochewed Schwarz, Emer Buckley (Reinhard von Nagel)

The harpsichords (J. Schwarz)