Wednesday, June 23, 2021

"In King Louis' Chambers" - soloists of the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra perform a program of chamber works at the International Jerusalem YMCA

Sketch: Miri Shamir

 

Not quite the lavish palace of Versailles, the elegant conference hall of the Jerusalem International YMCA was, however, a splendid venue for “In King Louis’ Chambers” performed by soloists of the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra on June 16th, 2021. JBO first violinist Noam Schuss introduced the works.

 

Danish organist Dietrich Buxtehude is known mostly for his organ music, his cantatas and for the long journey the young Johann Sebastian Bach undertook to meet him. Sadly, Buxtehude’s chamber works count among the least known of his compositions. Numbering twenty-two in all, they are influenced by Italian models, especially by the instrumental sonatas of the Venetian Giovanni Legrenzi circulating widely in Northern Europe, but they are also oriented to the German tradition of violin writing. All are of the ensemble sonata genre, then still in its infancy. Schuss remarked that Buxtehude’s Sonata in g minor for violin, viola da gamba and continuo was the only work on the program not relevant to the entertainment style of the court of Louis XIV, but that the connection was the viol, an instrument common in French consort music. Performing the sonata at the Jerusalem concert were Noam Schuss-violin, Tal Arbel-viola da gamba, Ophira Zakai-theorbo and Aviad Stier-harpsichord. The artists gave lively utterance to the improvisational, imaginative, expressive and colourful mannerisms of Buxtehude, his style referred to by Johann Mattheson in 1739 as “stylus fantasticus”. Led securely by Schuss, they presented the work’s remarkable contrasts, its hectic rhythms, its virtuosic writing, the frequent dialogues between violin and viola da gamba, its rhetorical devices and dancelike sections. Exciting music indeed and a delectable concert item!

 

And to music of the French court of Versailles. François Couperin, employed at the fashionable capital of 18th century artistic style, was known as a trendsetter – the author of a stylish and refined style, in which virtuosity and good taste met at eye level. Although better known today as a composer of harpsichord music, he wrote chamber music throughout his career. In “Les Nations”, published in 1726, each of the four “ordres” celebrates a Catholic power of Europe - France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire and the Savoy dynasty of Piedmont. The Baroque period was fascinated by such confrontations between nations via the medium of music. Representative of François Couperin’s preoccupation with “les goûts réunis” (the combination of French and Italian styles), each “ordre” is a combination of an Italianate trio sonata with its free-form virtuosity and a large-scale and elaborate French dance suite. Violinist Dafna Ravid joined the players for a performance of “La Françoise”. The JBO soloists presented the many aspects of the work - its fast flow of mood changes, plangent melodies, courtly dance sections, the unmannered statement of some semplice melodies, solid orchestral-type textures and poignant moving moments (the Sarabande’s role), all played articulately and with flair, with suave shaping, elegant ornamentation and stylistic touches. Fine court entertainment, the players combined informed historical perspective with their lively artistic spirit. 

 

Louis-Nicolas Clérambault was from a well-connected family, his family known for its musical service to French royalty. He himself served both at Versailles and at royal churches during the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XV. He was particularly known for his cantatas, these incorporating Italian techniques into a thoroughly French genre and mostly dealing quite dramatically with subjects taken from classical mythology and legend. The JBO program concluded with one of Clérambault’s small soprano operas “Léandre et Héro” (1713), sung by Daniela Skorka. Cantatas of this kind and setting were written for performance by small ensembles in the salons of the upper echelons of society. “Léandre et Héro” is based on the tragic story of two lovers. Hero lives on the Grecian side of the Hellespont Strait, Leander on the Asian side. To reach his lover, Leander swims the Hellespont at night. However, as fate would have it, the jealous god of the north wind elicits a storm in which Leander drowns. Hero, grief-stricken, throws herself into the waves. Neptune, however, brings the lovers into the realm of immortals, where they are united forever. Contending well with the French text and its word painting and communicating with the audience, Skorka sang with clarity and beautiful control. She gave convincing expression to Clérambault’s range of emotions - of eager love, heroic resolve; of terror and inconsolable grief - capturing the wistful atmosphere as well as the intense dramatic moments making up such "mini-operas". From the first elegant sounds of the opening trio-sonata-like prelude, the players, in tutti and in different small combinations, made the listener aware of the composer’s brilliant, illustrative instrumental writing - adding intimacy to Hero’s thoughts, evoking the zephyrs to accompany  melismatic vocal passages to some of the movements, creating the ferocity of the storm with its fast passagework for the instruments (including the viola da gamba), then taking one’s breath away with the sudden, hushed finality as the “darkness, intensifying, extinguishes the torch of the night.” However, moving into the world of immortals is guaranteed to send the audience home in good spirits, as the piece concluded with a graceful  Air, the text to its jaunty, buoyant rhythms delivering a reproach to Love – “always on the most tender of lovers fall the cruelest sufferings”.

 

Without the Versailles Palace’s crystal chandeliers glittering with reflected light from mirrors and its paintings framed by ornate, gold-leafed plaster moldings, the YMCA conference hall is nevertheless an attractive room with fine acoustics, well suited to Baroque chamber music, giving the stage to the artists' scrupulous balance of sound and the subtlety of this repertoire. An evening of festive, high-quality performance by JBO soloists. 

 

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