Early in 1725 Bach wrote a cantata about nymphs and shepherds for the birthday of a local duke for performance in his court or royal hunting lodge. Some five weeks later, those pastoral archetypes – Doris, Sylvia and their swains – had become the disciples, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, “mother of James”, John and Peter, mourners at Christ’s tomb. Never averse to recycling when a deadline loomed, Bach fitted a new text to the music, rejigging it hastily as a new composition for the high point of the liturgical year.
That work, later revised, became the Easter Oratorio. Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort and Players chose it, together with other Bach from the same period, for their debut concert at Saffron Hall. It was a rewarding programme. Compared to the St John and St Matthew Passions, the B minor Mass or the Christmas Oratorio, the Easter Oratorio is little known, a forgotten sibling. Yet this exuberant piece dances its exultation from the opening chorus – “Come, hurry and run” – to the exuberant finale.
In the arias and short recitatives in between, “salty tears” of melancholy are shed, the events surrounding the crucifixion contemplated. Much shorter than any of these other vocal-instrumental works, without chorales or proper narrator, it packs the full expressive gamut into its 40 minutes.
No doubt the Gabrieli’s performance would have been good anywhere, but in the particular acoustic of this much-praised hall, it acquired exceptional energy and zest. Every line, every texture could be heard. The outstanding playing of flute obbligato in the soprano aria “My soul, your spices should no more be myrrh”, the plaintive elegance of the oboe da caccia, the more mellow oboe d’amore and recorders; the quiet intricacies of the five-string cello, the celebratory trumpets and drums, all felt natural and alive, as if this had to be the sound Bach wanted, on these exact instruments. We can never know absolutely, but if a performance convinces you, the musicians have done their job.
Each excellent soloist, Rowan Pierce (soprano), Emilie Renard (mezzo-soprano), Nicholas Mulroy (tenor) and Stephan Loges (bass), relished the choruses, singing one voice to a part, and shone in solo arias. Saffron Hall, a miraculous structure within Saffron Walden county high school, is still new on the concert scene. It is everything you could wish: functional, well run, comfortable, friendly, and with a world-class programme – András Schiff next month – combined with local music-making. They make it easy for the tentative visitor, with an ever-ready shuttle bus to the station. Our driver, a volunteer since the hall opened in 2013, was asked if he got tired doing these dark, winding trips, often in bad weather. Not at all, he said, it made a change. He was going to be up until dawn that night with his sheep, lambing. Pastoral or paschal he didn’t say.
At Kings Place in London, the Feinstein Ensemble’s Bach weekend featured The Musical Offering. So much of Bach’s life remains an enigma, shaped around geography and jobs – Weimar, Mühlhausen, Köthen, Leipzig – that anecdotes revealing the man himself tend to be retold in ever more colourful versions. So it is with the Musical Offering (1747), written near the end of his life.
Bach had been staying at the court of Frederick the Great of Prussia in Potsdam, where the composer’s son, CPE Bach, was court harpsichordist. Frederick, a good flautist, asked Bach to improvise a theme of the king’s own making. Bach did so, brilliantly. Back in Leipzig, opportunistically, Bach composed a monumental sequence of canons and ricercars, dense with invention, inversion and riddles, culminating in a formidable six-part fugue. He dedicated it to Frederick and sent it off but never heard another word. Luckily the manuscript survived. Less fortunately, but understandably, the Kings Place performance was given with an interval, which detracted from the work’s strange, abstract and cumulative effect. In other respects, with Martin Feinstein (flute), Miki Takahashi (violin), Christopher Suckling (cello) and Robin Bigwood (harpsichord) leading the ensemble, the playing was full of verve and clarity.
There was no Bach in the BBC Singers’ intimate, beautifully sung concert for Palm Sunday, part of a new Holy Week festival at St John’s Smith Square, devised by Nigel Short and broadcast live on Radio 3. Instead, penitential music from across the centuries included English Tudor music – Byrd, Tallis, Weelkes – with two of Bruckner’s rich-textured motets and the Mass in E flat by Josef Rheinberger (1839-1901). Better known to organists than to the rest of us, Rheinberger’s refulgent music was once described as sounding as if someone had pulled out all the stops and leant on the keyboard. Ripeness is all. At times it’s what you need.
Star ratings (out of 5)
Gabrieli Consort and Players ★★★★★
Feinstein Ensemble ★★★
BBC Singers ★★★★
