The Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra closes its 36th concert season with "David's Lament" - works of Jeremiah Clarke and William Boyce. Conductor: Andrew Parrott (UK)

Maestro Andrew Parrott © Yoel Levy

 

Each concert of the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra's 2025-2026 subscription concert season visited a different European city, presenting works of its major composers. David's Lament, the final concert of the JBO's 36th season, took the audience to London, but with a different approach: the program consisted of works of Jeremiah Clarke and William Boyce - two composers not necessarily familiar to members of the JBO's listening public. The concert was conducted by the orchestra's honorary conductor Maestro Andrew Parrott (UK). Soloists were Tatiana Levin (soprano), Yonathan Suissa (haute-contra/tenor), Itamar Hildesheim (tenor) and Daniel Ze'ev Ben Baruch (baritone), with Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra founder/music director Prof. David Shemer at the harpsichord. This writer attended the event at the Jerusalem International YMCA on June 7th, 2026.

 

Henry Purcell’s untimely death in November 1695 elicited many musical- and literary tributes. Several composers wrote odes in his memory, one of the more elaborate being that of Jeremiah Clarke (1674-1707), one of Purcell’s younger colleagues. Holding prominent positions in turn at Winchester College, St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Chapel Royal, Clarke's output was not limited to church music: he wrote songs, incidental music for theatre, works for harpsichord, and, as mentioned, courtly odes. Taking Clarke's Come, come along for a dance and a song, Ode on the Death of Henry Purcell (1695), Maestro Parrott put together a suite of instrumental pieces. Delightful items, they were given a colourful, zesty reading, some suggesting just a few folksy elements, the pieces offering vibrant roles for the JBO's impressive line-up of wind players. Included was a delicately ornamented harpsichord solo of "Mister Purcell's Farewell" (Shemer), the suite signing out with Alon Melnik's hearty trumpet solo in Jeremiah Clarke’s best-known composition - the Trumpet Voluntary (originally called The Prince of Denmark’s March) - a piece formerly attributed to Purcell.

 

David’s lament over Saul and Jonathan has inspired centuries of musical adaptations, one celebrated Renaissance setting of this passage (Samuel 1:19–27) being Josquin des Prez' Planxit autem David, other notable polyphonic settings including works of Nicolas Gombert and Orlando di Lasso. A later work, Thomas Weelkes' sublime When David Heard, explores the depths of David's grief and emotion. Moving into the 20th- and 21st centuries, one might mention Yehezkel Braun's extensive vocal work David's Lament over Saul and Jonathan (2009) Eric Whitacre's When David Heard (1999) and Canadian composer Kai Leung's When David Heard (2022). William Boyce (1711-1779) wrote David's Lamentation over Saul and Jonathan in 1736 at age 24, revising it for performances in Dublin during the mid-1740s. Maestro Parrott directed the JBO players and four singers in the earlier London version, (libretto: John Lockman, based on Samuel 1). This was the first performance of the elegiac work to be heard on Israeli concert platforms. Following the profoundly poignant two-movement Overture in G minor, each gesture addressed with punctilious shaping, we were transported to the melancholy, at times darkly intense character of the "dramatic scene" (This is not really an oratorio). As to the choral sections, the four fine young singers joined to produce a rich, consolidated, coherent vocal ensemble sound, their treatment of the texts indicative to the recountal. Boyce's work has no dramatis personae: the soloists undertake roles as narrator or protagonist as the drama progresses. Yonathan Suissa (in tenor voice) reads into the text via his direct, unmannered singing, his narration and presentation of dialogues transparent, convincing and engaging.  Itamar Hildesheim's vivid story-telling and word painting highlight the work's dramatic aspects and contrasts. The two singers then join to deliver the musical and emotional crux of the work - "Sad Israel, thy beauty's pride" - a duet of sublime beauty, the solo violin (Noam Gal) delicately underscoring the duet's noble, intimate expressiveness. Baritone Daniel Ze'ev Ben Baruch's vibrant, buoyant singing and Tatiana Levin's well- anchored and full-bodied soprano  made up the well-chosen vocal team. In this eloquent and insightful performance, indeed, a fine vehicle for the singers and JBO instrumentalists, Maestro Parrott sheds important light on a composer of an era traditionally dominated by the figure of Handel. The event brought the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra's 2025-2026 concert season to an exhilarating and majestic end. 

 

Conducted by Maestro Ingo Metzmacher (Germany), the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra performs Bruckner's Symphony No.8 in C minor

 

Ingo Metzmacher © feliXbroede

The prospect of hearing Anton Bruckner's Symphony No.8 in C minor seemed to take some audience members of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra out of their comfort zone. Or did it, at the same time, draw and challenge listeners to experience the epic work in all its sweeping radiance?  Bruckner's Symphony No.8 was conducted by  Maestro Ingo Metzmacher (Germany). This writer attended the performance in the Sherover Theatre, Jerusalem, on May 31st, 2026.

 

Bruckner was in his sixties when he wrote his monumental Eighth Symphony, informed by Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, and Bruckner’s own earlier works. The making of Symphony No.8, the composer's last completed symphony, however, got off to a rocky start. Writing it occupied Bruckner for three years. Finishing the first version in 1887, Bruckner sent the score to conductor Hermann Levi., who rejected the piece, claiming it was basically unperformable. Over the next few years, Bruckner effectively recomposed the work. In the 1887 version, for example, the first movement ends in major-key triumph. The revised version ends the first movement (Allegro moderato) with "sighs" from the violas in minor-key dejection, melodramatically described by the composer himself as " when one is on his deathbed, and opposite hangs a clock, which, while his life comes to its end, beats on ever steadily: tick, tock, tick, tock". The other movements were also subtly but profoundly revised, resulting in heightened focus of Bruckner's musical ideas. Many Bruckner symphonies exist in more than one version. The Eighth exists in four. The version performed at the recent IPO concert was the scholarly edition of Leopold Novak, published in 1955 and based on Bruckner’s 1890 version. The work is scored for a large orchestra, with 15 brass instruments, including eight horns, four of which double on Wagner tubas. 

 

Symphony No.8 was premiered in December 1892, with the Vienna Philharmonic performing it at the Musikverein (Vienna) and conducted by Hans Richter. The audience included Brahms, Hugo Wolf and Johann Strauss. The critic Eduard Hanslick spoke of the work as having a "nightmarish hangover style - a future we therefore do not envy!" Indeed, Brahms had previously described Bruckner's works as "symphonic boa-constrictors". 

 

Offering more explanations as to extra-musical ideas behind the symphony, Bruckner himself suggested that the Scherzo, (he places it before the slow movement) was "a portrait of the figure of German Michael" (a bucolic rustic from German folk tradition), the languid, radiant, harp-ennobled trio section of the Scherzo depicting Michael dreaming. The composer added that the opening of the Finale was inspired by the Cossacks, the Russians having visited the Austrian Emperor not long before. Whether today's listener wishes to rely on- or relate to such associations raises some questions. What is imperative to all hearing the work, however, is the fact that Bruckner was a spiritual composer, and that his spirituality as a person is certainly present in Symphony No.8. Bruckner was also a renowned organist. The brass section of Symphony No.8 often functions as an organ, a direct connection with Bruckner’s deeply religious nature. From the unsettling darkness sounding right at the start of this symphony, building up power repeatedly and then letting it subside, to the Finale's coda, in blazing C major, Ingo Metzmacher's direction was one of commitment, transparency and musical precision, of structural comprehensibility and precise ensemble control. Relinquishing the use of a baton, he shows the audience through the symphony's vast, grand canvas, through its dark sonorities and moments of shattering drama, also leading us through such uncanny moments as that at the centre of the first movement, where Bruckner paints one of the emptiest, most desolate musical landscapes ever - a single flute sounding over tolling, funereal trumpets and chromatic "gasps" in the basses. As per usual, the IPO's outstanding instrumentalists, both sections and individual players, provided some memorable moments, too many to mention here. Hearing and watching the players in the huge wind sections was a stirring experience. From the Scherzo on, all eyes were on timpanist Dan Moshayev, his playing punctilious and sensitive. Metzmacher and the IPO players joined in profound, mutual elucidation of the music, in.an organic inevitability that comes when orchestra and conductor find a synergetic union. Not only exposing the music’s darkness and pain, but also its optimistic, spiritual ecstasy, Ingo Metzmacher's conducting was both passionate and eloquent, never manic. Born in Hanover in 1957 (where his father was a well-known 'cellist), this was his first appearance with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. In an interview with Colin Anderson in TWENTIETH-CENTURY REFLECTIONS, Maestro Metzmacher makes reference to "the German tradition" which he clarifies as "clear, forward music-making, very honest, not a big show for yourself."  

 

Sharon Prushansky performs early 19th-century European works on the Graf fortepiano of the Eden-Tamir Music Center, Jerusalem

 

Sharon Prushansky (Courtesy Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra)

At the Eden-Tamir Music Center, Ein Kerem, Jerusalem, on May 23rd 2026, Sharon Prushansky performed "Between Classicism and Early Romanticism". Ms. Prushansky played a selection of early 19th-century works on the center's recently-acquired 1819 Graf fortepiano, an excellent instrument made by historic piano builder Paul McNulty (US), based on pianos played by Beethoven, Schubert and Chopin.

 

The program opened with Ludwig van Beethoven's Sonata No.15 in D major Op.28 "Pastoral". Although from the beginning of the composer's so-called middle period, the sonata follows the traditional fast-slow-scherzo-finale pattern. Addressing its easy-going and genial character, Beethoven's Hamburg publisher gave the sonata the title of "Pastoral", a soubriquet that becomes particularly clear in the final movement (Rondo: Allegro ma non troppo.) From the opening movement (Allegro), its "heartbeat" providing an air of mystery, Prushansky's playing is stylistic, carefully shaped, tasteful and understated. Via the direct sound world of the fortepiano, she reads into the score's fine detail, also pointing out Beethoven's small surprising turns. In the Andante, the sustained melody set over a staccato, broken-chord bass (one of the work's idiomatic effects), she allows gentle hesitations to shape the movement's course. Following the Scherzo, negotiated with the wink of an eye, Prushansky’s playing of the final movement, with its drone-like opening figure, emerges clean and vivid, indeed, suggestive of rustic charm.

 

In 1805, Irish poet Thomas Moore wrote a short poem titled “The Last Rose of Summer” This was later set to a traditional tune, the poem and the tune published in 1813 in Volume 5 of Moore’s Selection of Irish Melodies. Several composers have created their own arrangements and fantasies based on the tune. How exactly Felix Mendelssohn came across “The Last Rose of Summer” is unclear; he composed a fantasia on that tune in 1827, published as Op.15. The melody is presented in plain and unadorned Adagio passages contrasted by intense presto utterances. Prushansky makes a good case for the attractive and somewhat curious Last Rose of Summer Fantasy. 

 

Despite his short life, Friedrich Theodor Fröhlich (1803-1836) is nevertheless regarded today as Switzerland’s most significant early Romantic composer. He was also a brilliant pianist. Leaving behind over 700 compositions, Fröhlich's choral works and songs, all in the Romantic vein, are impressive. He also composed two symphonies, overtures and much chamber music, as well as piano pieces. Of the latter genre, Sharon Prushansky performed 3 Elegien (Three Elegies) for solo piano from Op.15 (1833). She gave rhapsodic expression to the pieces' pianistic, personal, highly melodious and fetchingly Romantic moods, so suited to the congenial attributes of the fortepiano. The second piece she played, (with the puzzling title of) Andante: Nicht an Alexis (Not to Alexis), is characterized by the unusual time signature of 5/8 (the first piece in history using the signature of 5/8 throughout?). It is quirky and quite lovely. Altogether, this was a fine opportunity to hear music of the mostly-forgotten composer.

 

Frédéric Chopin composed mazurkas virtually throughout his life. Boasting nearly 60 of them, these miniatures form a pivotal body of the composer's most personal musical utterances, a constant reminder of the cultural ties he held to his native Poland, as well as of the memory he retained of the mentality of his people. The Jerusalem recital included three of Chopin's early mazurkas. Playing Mazurka in F minor Op.7 No.3, its pianissimo opening suggesting  bagpipes, then the much-loved hearty, jauntily dancing Mazurka in B-flat major, to the Mazurka in C-sharp minor Op.6 No.2, the latter’s rustic atmosphere introduced by the contrarily accentuated fifths drone in the bass, Prushansky addresses the unique character of each (including curious, deviant motifs appearing in several of the mazurkas), freely shaping and flexing gestures, presenting the wealth of melodic invention and of harmonic-, rhythmic- and expressive nuances of each dance with spontaneity.

 

As part of the broad musical education given to her by her father, Clara Wieck learned to compose. From childhood to middle age, she produced a considerable body of works. Her six Soirées musicales Op.6 (1835-1836), written at age 16 or 17, remain one of her most notable works in the solo piano repertoire. Composed in her distinctive lyrical style, the pieces (suggesting the influence of Mendelssohn and Chopin), reflect her ability to combine elements of Romanticism with Classical structures. Her husband, Robert Schumann, spoke of the Soirées musicales as boasting a "wealth of unconventional resources, her ability to entangle the secret, more deeply twisting threads and then to unravel them." Prushansky's exquisitely delicate rendition of the Notturno in F major transported the listener into the beauty, delicacy and Romantic freedom of Clara Schumann's musical world, the artist's hearty, radiant playing of the Mazurka in G major and the Polonaise in A minor conjuring up the grand ambience of the glittering concert halls in which Clara would have appeared throughout Europe and England. Performing the (largely forgotten) Impromptu in E Major (1844), Prushansky highlighted its wistful flow of melodies with supple phrasing, subtle dynamics and a warm tone.  How inspiring it was to hear these splendid pieces of Clara Schumann!

 

Born in Israel in 1987, Sharon Prushansky attended the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music (Tel Aviv), earning a bachelor's degree there in piano and organ, then attending the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland, where she studied harpsichord, organ and fortepiano. A specialist in historical performance as well as in historical keyboard instruments, she mostly focuses on music of the Romantic era, also performing on modern pianos and the organ. Since 2009, Sharon Prushansky has resided in Switzerland.

 

 

Schubert and Brahms performed at a concert at the Eden-Tamir Music Center, Jerusalem, commemorating 20 years of Prof. Bracha Eden's passing

Alexander Tamir,Bracha Eden (Courtesy Eden-Tamir Music Center)

A concert commemorating 20 years of Prof. Bracha Eden's passing took place at the Eden-Tamir Music Center, Ein Kerem, Jerusalem, on May 19th, 2026. No venue could have been better suited to the event - the centre duo pianists Alexander Tamir and Bracha Eden founded in 1968 (originally, the Max Targ Music Center) which they directed, and in which they and many local artists performed. Set in tranquil, leafy surroundings, this unique music centre continues to serve as a busy hub for chamber music performance. Eden and Tamir met in 1951 as students of Prof. Alfred Schroeder, then to perform together for over 50 years as soloists with orchestras, in recitals, on television and radio, and in various festivals. They made their debut in Israel in 1954 and appeared in New York (1955) and Rome (1956), where they won the 1957 Vercelli Competition. Eden and Tamir taught as senior professors at the Rubin Academy of Music (today, the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance.). During the 1990s they went to perform and teach in China, Russia and Poland and, in 1997, they became directors of the International Duo Piano Seminary.

  

Prof. Yoram Eden, Bracha Eden's son, opened the event with some amusing reminiscences from the duo's performing experiences. Dr. Dror Semmel, today artistic director of the Eden-Tamir Music Center, was a student of Bracha Eden. He spoke of her as a musician and teacher and of their close friendship, also making mention of the Eden-Tamir Piano Duo's punctilious performance standards, characterized by both precision and a sense of freedom. 

 

Franz Schubert's oeuvre for four hands formed a significant part of the Eden-Tamir Duo's repertoire. No other great composer has written as many works for piano duet. The program opened with Schubert's Fantasie in F minor D.940 for piano four hands (a favourite item of the Eden-Tamir Duo's repertoire), here performed by the Jerusalem Piano Duo (siblings Dror Semmel and Shir Semmel.) Indeed, making music with others constituted a meaningful pastime among Schubert's circle of friends. With the Fantasie in F minor D 940, however, Schubert completely leaves the sphere of social gatherings and pedagogy in the final year of his life, creating a work of almost symphonic form. This piece, its four linked sections marked Allegro–Largo–Scherzo–Tempo 1, gave Schubert the structure upon which he could showcase the sweep of potential the "Fantasie" concept offered him and one that permitted him to apply non-standard transitions. The work was dedicated to Karoline Esterházy, one of Schubert's summer students on the Esterházy estates in Zseliz (1818,1824), the dedication possibly indicative of a romantic attachment between teacher and student. Following the Jerusalem Piano Duo's' elegiac delivery of the Fantasie's haunting opening, the implacable second theme soon arriving to challenge it in giant blocks of sound, the artists (Dror playing the primo, Shir the secondo) show the listener through the work's rich canvas, one of wistful introspection, of  moments of dancelike verve and general spirit of bonhomie, of quicksilver changes of mode (often alternating between major and minor in successive phrases) and intensity, then to challenge with a commanding, defiant fugue. Each return to the poetic first melody emerged more affective than previously, as the work concluded with the uncompromisingly bleak tone of the closing bars, exceptional to the works of Schubert. A carefully-detailed, personal and moving performance of this monumental work.

Johannes Brahms' Liebeslieder Waltzes for piano four hands and vocal quartet Op.52 was another work central to the Eden-Tamir Piano Duo's repertoire. Moving from Hamburg to Vienna, Brahms was now writing a large body of music set in more intimate forms, among those being the Liebeslieder Walzer, composed in the common music-making style for domestic salons. The original score calls for "piano four hands and voices ad libitum”. The texts of the Liebeslieder are East European folk poems, translated into German by Georg Friedrich Daumer.  In a letter to his publisher, Brahms dismissed his set of 18 Liebeslieder Walzer as “trifles”. Yet, despite their popular appeal, their brevity, their characteristic rhythms, and their typical pattern of 4-line texts in which each couplet is sung and then repeated, these pieces are highly sophisticated. The miniature Lieder display a variety of jolly- and light-hearted moods, of ironic, introspective, or sad feelings, some incomplete in sentiment or unexplained, with Brahms' writing elegant, elaborate and rich in word painting. Performing the collection were Shir Semmel and Dror Semmel (piano), with vocal students from the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music (Tel Aviv University) - Karni Malloul (soprano), Shulamith Lvovsky (mezzo-soprano), Nevo Weiner (tenor) and Tal Aharonovich (baritone). With the pianists placed behind them and no conductor (a conductor only if performed by a choir), this was no easy task for the young singers. Negotiating the different emotions of each of the Liebeslieder's fleeting vignettes, they joined the pianists in creating Brahms’ musical language, one intertwining popular- and art music, in presenting its Romantic gestures, its charm and its small dramas. In this quintessential Brahms work for "quick change artists", the vocal ensembles were interspersed with some lovely vocal solos. I believe Professors Eden and Tamir would have appreciated the choice of vocal students for the performance.

 

Back to 1828, to the last year of Schubert's much-too-brief life, when he composed his three last sonatas for piano, these generally seen as the culmination of the composer's lifelong occupation with the piano sonata genre. The Ein Kerem concert concluded with Schubert's last sonata - Piano Sonata in B flat major D.960. Towards the end of Bracha Eden's life, Dror Semmel talked to her about his study of the sonata, but the opportunity of his playing it to her did not eventuate. At the Jerusalem concert, Dror chose to perform it on the Eden-Tamir Center's recently-acquired 1819 Graf fortepiano, a marvellous instrument modelled by historic piano builder Paul McNulty (US) after instruments played by Beethoven, Schubert and Chopin. One of the towering masterpieces not only of the solo piano genre, but of all musical repertoire, the D.960 is an expansive composition. Schubert is thought to have performed it at least once in his last months, but it was not published until more than a decade after his death. From the exalted opening measures to those of the exuberant ending gestures, Dror Semmel's performance of it on the fortepiano was personally expressive and profound. Engaging the instrument's four pedals in order to create different timbres, he juxtaposed the work's intense aspects with its mysterious moments, highlighting Schubert's kaleidoscope of gestures with carefully chiselled phrasing and discretely-poised timing. I talked to him about playing the work on fortepiano. He believes that as modern listeners and audiences, "we are compelled to hear those instruments in comparison to the modern Steinway", adding that the distinctive action of the fortepiano " transforms the core essence of this music into a different realm of sound and expression. For example, there are many layers and nuances of piano and pianissimo."  From the almost heartbreaking tenderness of the opening movement, to the remote, austere and poignant calm of the Andante sostenuto, to the buoyant, humorous B-flat-major course of the closing Allegro non troppo, Semmel combines the imagination and pianistic colour of the past with scholarship of the present, 

"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)

A new disc: Romantic works for clarinet and piano. Gaia Gaibazzi and Clarissa Carafa perform music of Brahms, Schumann and Reger

 

"MENTORS", a recently issued disc of German Romantic music for clarinet and piano, presents works of Reger, Brahms and Schumann performed by two Italian artists - Gaia Gaibazzi (clarinet) and Clarissa Carafa (piano). In her liner notes, Gaibazzi writes: "The works of Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and Max Reger offer fascinating insights into how composers of the 19th and early 20th centuries reinterpreted and transformed the musical languages of their time." This Da Vinci Classics album presents a carefully-chosen and representative selection of Romantic works for clarinet and piano, works that are both technically demanding and emotionally profound.

 

 

In late 1890, Johannes Brahms was planning his will and declaring that his compositional career was at an end. Then, in 1894, from his summer vacation in the Austrian spa town of Bad Ischl, however, the composer wrote to clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld (principal clarinettist of the Meiningen Court Orchestra as of 1879, and whose playing Brahms had already encountered in the early 1880s) inviting him to visit him there for the two to play "two modest sonatas with piano". Indeed, Brahms’ music for clarinet is clearly influenced by Mühlfeld's instrumental style. The first performances of the Op. 120 Sonatas were given privately soon afterwards, with the press proclaiming that these works were “wonderful” and that they "would cause a great sensation”. Indeed, a comeback from self-imposed artistic retirement has rarely reaped a more illustrious outcome than in the case of the two Opus 120 Sonatas for clarinet and piano! Gaia Gaibazzi and Clarissa Carafa perform the first of the two - Sonata No.1 in F minor. From the initial sounds of the opening Allegro appassionato movement (more wistful than passionate coming from Brahms' pen) one becomes aware of the artists' total affinity with the work, as they move hand-in-glove to seize each of Brahms' different gestures, each of the work's personal contours. Together they recreate the sonata's wonderful contrasts of texture and emotional energy, its urgency and grace, as its mostly introspective course culminates in the exuberance of the final Vivace movement. Their playing engages flexibility of tempo, so integral to the spontaneity of Brahms' musical language, as Gaibazzi's lush playing exploits all the expressive possibilities unique to the clarinet, with Carafa's depth of understanding, the surging waves of feeling woven throughout, and her penchant for the Romantic style  endorsed by easeful virtuosity.

 

 

Clarinettists and many music-lovers are familiar with Brahms' sonatas for clarinet and piano, but, somewhat surprisingly, not all have heard Max Reger’s three clarinet and piano sonatas. Indeed, it was on hearing one of Brahms' Op. 120 sonatas that Reger was inspired to write his own. Brahms' influence is evident in their contrapuntal writing, their textures, the elaborate piano parts and singing clarinet roles, but Reger’s sonatas also bring attention to his unique, rich 20th-century idiom. Performing Sonata No.1 of Opus 49, that in A-flat major (1900), Gaibazzi and Carafa give exciting expression to Reger's original thematic material and harmonic progressions, as they engage in the sonata's plethora of colourful dynamics and intricate phrasing with freshness, buoyancy, inventiveness and finespun sensitivity. Their fine teamwork and transparency of sound present the listener with each gesture and nuance. In addition to the sonata, the artists perform two of Reger's charming miniatures, pieces which testify to the pleasure Reger (like Brahms) took in domestic music-making. Those small gems were generally published in music journals, reflecting the composer’s desire to reach a wider public via shorter works. Carafa and Gaibazzi's delivery of "Albumblatt" (1902) is flowing, placid, at times pondering, their playing of the "Tarantella" (1902) effervescent, bold and wonderfully shaped, its zesty course only temporarily halted by the coy middle section.

 

In February 1849, Dresden was seized by violent political turmoil, forcing Robert and Clara Schumann to flee to the countryside. In a whirl of feverish writing, Robert Schumann created the Fantasiestücke Op. 73 in two days. Coming from one of the happier periods of his life and career, the work (originally titled “Soiréestücke”, to which he then gave preference to the more poetic title) was published later that year. The first performance of the original clarinet and piano setting was given at a concert in Leipzig in January 1850. Carafa and Gaibazzi move seamlessly and deftly from the fantasies' moments of deep introspection through to its bursts of euphoria, each bewitching, unexpected harmonic shift sweeping the listener into a different fulcrum of Schumann's stream of consciousness. Expressive, buoyant and spontaneous, their playing of the three splendid miniatures is carefully paced and flexed, giving sincerity and warmth to the poetry and lush beauty of the Fantasiestücke.

 

Recorded at the Villa Borzino, Borsalla, Italy, in November 2023, this is a disc to appeal to lovers of Romantic chamber music and fine performance. Gaibazzi plays a Buffet Crampon RC clarinet; Carafa plays on a Steinway & Sons model D piano. 

Gaia Gaibazzi (Akvilė Šileikaitė)

Clarissa Carafa (Giusi Lorelli)