Vera Vaidman performs all J.S.Bach's unaccompanied works for violin and 'cello in Tel Aviv. Concert No.3

Photo: Davide Iadiccio

The third of Vera Vaidman’s four weekly recitals of all J.S.Bach’s unaccompanied works for violin and violoncello took place at the Israel Conservatory of Music, Tel Aviv on March 22nd, 2019. Performing the ‘cello works on the viola, Weidman mostly uses the Watson Forbes arrangement for viola, but she also consults  all ‘cello sources. (The original manuscript  of the ‘Cello Suites is lost.) An extraordinary undertaking, Vaidman performed the series in New York last year.

It was for six years, between 1717 and 1723, when Johann Sebastian Bach, in the employ of Leopold, prince and ruler of Anhalt-Cöthen, whose principality followed the Calvinist faith, that Bach composed mostly instrumental (but not organ) and secular compositions. These included the two sets of pieces for solo string instruments: one set for violin and the other for ‘cello, with the composer entering practically uncharted waters, especially when it came to a bass instrument. For the Suites for Violoncello, Bach chose the somewhat old-fashioned genre - the suite, opening with  with a Prélude, the longest movement, the dance movements following it in the same order of  Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, a pair of so-called “gallantries” -  Minuets, Bourrées or Gavottes - and ending with an English Gigue.   The earliest manuscripts, copies penned by Bach’s second wife, Anna Magdalena, bear no indication of how Bach thought the pieces should be played, leaving the works eternally clouded in mystery and up to the personal interpretation of the performer. They have become staple repertoire for the viola repertoire ever since being transcribed into alto clef.

Vera Vaidman opened with ‘Cello Suite No.3 in C major BWV 1009, as she took the listener into the Prélude, its forthright opening descending figure opening up Bach’s kaleidoscope of voice play, string techniques and daring dissonances, leading on to the movement’s mighty pedal point, as its gestures emerged one by one via some understated flexing. The dance movements that following displayed spontaneity and clarity, the artist preferring to present the Sarabande, with its series of triple and quadruple stops, as rich in dynamic variety, majestic and contemplative, the Bourrées carefully detailed and charming, not especially light-of-foot, with the final Gigue intense coloured with a fine play of light and shade. In Vaidman’s deep, contemplative playing of the Prélude of ‘Cello Suite No. 2 in D minor BWV 1008, a movement based on a simple arpeggio figure, she showed the listener through the elements making up the ever-increasing complexity and tension of its continuum. The courtly dances to follow remained in the realm of introspection, from the Allemande’s melodiousness and coups de théâtre, the urgency, pondering and temperament of the Courante, the Sarabande, its serious, broad gestures wrought with respect and some ornamenting, the two not-entirely-relaxed Bourrées unmannered, to end with her noble, breathing and flexed playing of the Gigue, playing reflecting the joy of the dance.

Following intermission, Vera Vaidman performed Bach’s Violin Sonata No.3 in C major BWV 1005. Here, in this sonata da chiesa, where the unique opening Adagio reveals Bach at his most experimental and daring, Vaidman’s playing of it was personal and riveting, not only in its rhythmic pulse but also in its unabashed display of the movement’s bold chordal- and dissonant elements. Bach the illimitable improvisor surely stands behind the gestures of this first movement. No less complex is the second movement, a mighty, immense Fuga, a weighty task for performer (and listener) as, at 354 bars, it opens with a subject is taken from  the chorale “Komm, heiliger Geist”, with an almost  frivolous countersubject of evenly descending chromatic half notes, then to reach the point of “al reverso”, at which the fugue subject and countersubject become the inverse of what they started out to be. The movement ends with the composer reminding us of where he started out, as a literal repeat of the opening fugal exposition rounds off the work. Vaidman’s playing of the fugue is intelligent, highly articulate and well delineated as she melds its curiously split-charactered subject and countersubject into a brilliant whole that almost dares the audience not to breathe till she signs out of it with an open 5th. Following a cerebral but lyrical reading of the Largo, with Bach now writing in a pared-down two-voice texture, Vaidman draws the work to an impressive conclusion with the Allegro assai, a true virtuosic tour-de-force, its profusion of melodic lines originating from a single running line. Its dazzling and playful course serves as a reminder of Bach’s deep understanding of the  violin’s multi-voice capabilities and expressive range.

For an encore, Vera Vaidman sent the audience home with the charm and French delicacy of Bach’s Gavotte en Rondeau from the Partita for solo violin No. 3 in E major, BWV 1006. Not playing on a Baroque violin, she plays on  aluminium-wound gut strings but with Baroque bows, engaging in some vibrato  “for timbral warmth...not to be producing a sterile sound”, in her own words, playing “music on the modern violin/viola but in the spirit of Baroque.” Vera Vaidman’s Bach concerts are surely a highlight of the 2018-2019 concert season.