The 2019 Bach in Jerusalem Festival: Franz Raml performs organ music of J.S.Bach at the Redeemer Church, Jerusalem

Photo: Annika Dollner

The fourth Bach in Jerusalem Festival took place from March 22nd to 26th 2019, offering a rich and varied selection of high-quality events. The festival, annually taking place close to the date of Bach’s birth (March 21st), is under the auspices of the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra, whose musical director Prof. David Shemer also directs the Bach Festival.

 

At the Church of the Redeemer in Jerusalem’s Old City, organist Franz Raml (Germany) performed “A Tribute to Johann Sebastian Bach”, a selection of works by J.S.Bach at a noon concert on March 23rd. Welcoming the very large audience, Mr. Gerard Levi, director of the Israel Organ Association, spoke of the church’s Karl Schuke organ as especially suitable to  J.S.Bach’s music.

 

Raml’s program offered a representative selection of Bach’s organ repertoire, opening with a work of Bach “the transcriber”. We heard Concerto in C major BWV 594, the composer’s transcription of Vivaldi’s Violin Concerto in D major ‘Grosso Mogul’ Op.7 No.5. Vivaldi’s compositions had significant impact on Bach. A festive piece full of brilliant effects and violin-like cadenzas, Raml’s spontaneous and tastefully ornamented playing of it highlighted Bach’s daring use of dissonance, his introduction of new figurations into organ playing and improvisation-style motifs. The concert program included three chorale preludes; in that based on “Vater unser im Himmelreich” BWV 682, its score rich in symbols (Jesus teaching his disciples), Raml’s playing was lavish in its timbres and finely orchestrated. In “Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr” BWV 663, the chorale subject was presented in a cantabile, fruity, bassoon-tinted voice, with “suspirans” figures and suspensions, its eighth-note ritornello movement gently swayed.  As to “An Wasserflüssen Babylon” BWV 653, its bright, noble and grand timbres provided a bold but pensive backing for the ornamented chorale sounding in the tenor. 

 

Engaging in a different genre, Bach’s notoriously difficult contrapuntal trio sonatas, Franz Raml re-created the sophisticated structure of Trio Sonata in C major BWV 529, bringing out its many contrasts with taste and pristine technique, choosing lighter timbres for the outer movements. As to the Prelude and Fugue in D minor BWV 539, the work is a matter of “mix and match” (or do the two really match?), the two pieces only placed together in the 19th century. The brief and daringly unpretentious but splendid Prelude, played on manuals alone, created a mood piece of elegance and introspection. The fugue, in all its complexity, was articulate, both serious and celebratory, its ornate ending signing out with a major chord. The concert concluded with Prelude and Fugue in D Major BWV 532, a work characterised by charm, drama and the unprecedented virtuosity of the pedal line. Following his festive, imposing playing of the Prelude, the artist’s joyful, ornate presentation of the Fugue gave expression to Bach’s idiosyncratic subject, one strangely split in half by a long rest, and how the fugue makes daring forays into remote keys.

 

Raml’s playing offered delightful timbral choices on the Redeemer Church’s Karl Schuke organ, his embellishments and flourishes never overdone Regarded today as the leading specialist in Baroque organs in southern Germany, Franz Raml divides his time between playing services on the historic Holzhey organ at Rot a. D. Rot, performing internationally as organist, harpsichordist and fortepianist and directing the Hassler Consort.