{"id":5341,"date":"2012-06-15T13:24:01","date_gmt":"2012-06-15T17:24:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=5341"},"modified":"2012-10-17T06:31:26","modified_gmt":"2012-10-17T10:31:26","slug":"bachfest-leipzig%e2%80%99s-musical-offerings-radiale-nacht-with-colin-jacobsen-and-alisa-weilerstein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=5341","title":{"rendered":"Bachfest Leipzig\u2019s Musical Offerings; Radiale Nacht with Colin Jacobsen and Alisa Weilerstein"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Rebecca Schmid<\/p>\n

The motto of this year\u2019s Bachfest Leipzig, \u201c\u2026ein neues Lied\u201d (a new song),\u00a0could not be a more fitting choice to honor J.S. Bach\u2019s legacy in the city where he spent his final 27 years as cantor. Upon arriving in 1723, he set out to write a cantata every week, enlisting as scribes his second wife, Anna Magdalena, and students who were trained at the Schola Thomana. Now buried beneath a bronze plaque at the foot of the altar in the St. Thomas Church, Bach\u2014or at least his presumed remains which were exhumed from a former cemetery and transported in 1949\u2014continues to infuse local practices with his spirit. The St. Thomas Boys Choir, celebrating its 800th<\/sup> anniversary this year, has commissioned new music for six major religious occasions and included some of Europe\u2019s most seminal contemporary composers: Hans Werner Henze, Heinz Holliger and Krzysztof Penderecki will have all premiered works in the church by January of next year.<\/p>\n

At a concert yesterday, the Bachfest (June 7-17) reprised Easter music by St. Thomas Cantor Georg Christoph Biller and Henze\u2019s Pentecost music alongside two Bach works from the Leipzig period. Pentecost, a holiday of tremendous weight for practicing Christians in Europe, officially took place late last month and celebrates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles. Henze, a self-avowed atheist, and his librettist Christian Lehnert take a spiritually inquisitive approach in An den Wind <\/em>for chorus and orchestra. The chaos of unharnessed natural forces and human doubt yield to the promise of peace: \u201cthe dove will wake, its wings,\/caught by the gusts, no longer will repose,\u201d begins the final chorus after a solo violin emerges from the dust of a desert storm. Henze references Bach with a direct but unfinished quote \u201cJesu, meine Freu\u2026\u201d to ominous woodwinds and harp plucks in the first section, while wild counterpoint and a percussion interlude after Simon the Zealot\u2019s proclamation of a burning wasteland recall the dramatic tension of his opera Phaedra <\/em>(2007), another collaboration with Lehnert.<\/p>\n

Henze often separates the high and low voices of the St. Thomas Choir and aligns them with according instrumentation: ethereal celeste, piano clusters and sustained chords accompany the pure timbre of boy sopranos while changed voices are underscored by low strings and woodwinds. Unaccompanied moments such as the Disciple\u2019s urging to \u201ccall out\u2026so softly that no one shall hear us but the wind\u201d take on deceptively liturgical importance, yet the orchestra thwarts any sense of resolution, such as the gong crash after the mysterious harmonies of the chorus asking God for immortal strength or the rambling piano and bassoon blast following the sopranos\u2019 quote from the Lutheran Bible, \u201cPeace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you\u2026.\u201d The Holy Ghost\u2019s powers of salvation transcend earthly strife to restore the natural world\u2014\u201ca wing\u2019s beat, a wind, a simple breath\u201d\u2014bringing the choir together against a\u00a0billowing atmospheric chord. Biller led the choir and members of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in an intense, precise performance that clocked in at 20 minutes on the mark.<\/p>\n

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Biller conducting at the St. Thomas Church \u00a9 Bach-Archiv Leipzig \/ Gert Mothes: Bachfest Leipzig 2012 <\/p><\/div>\n

The cantor, in his St.-Thomas-Ostermusik<\/em>, takes a more pious approach, using light-dark imagery to represent the ascent of Christ with direct allusions to Bach\u2019s Passions. Biller himself devised the text for his cantata (also 20 minutes) based on Bible passages and originally composed verse. The opening features a sustained Wagnerian-like minor chord that is punctuated by trombones, only to yield to serenading recorders before the chorus rejoices in this \u201cEaster day! Away with care and sorrow!\u201d Cluster harmonies reminiscent of modern American choral music bring a progressive, optimistic air, while a recurrent rising, whole-tone wind motive and quasi-liturgical structure ground the work in a decisively western European tradition. Some members of the audience sang the descant of the Bavarian\/Austrian hymn \u201cChrist is arisen\u201d while the boy sopranos crooned into the stratosphere, a transcendent passage that culminated in the clang of trumpet and chimes. Although the work may have its hokey moments for non-church goers, Biller manages to straddle contemporary developments in religious music with a clear reverence for the St. Thomas tradition. Alongside the immaculately trained choir, tenor Martin Lattke gave a fervent performance as the Evangelist.<\/p>\n

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Between the two newly commissioned works, Bach\u2019s Ascension Oratorio<\/em> (BWV 11) transported the audience back to the heyday of cantatas as the Gewandhaus musicians and boys\u2019 choir performed with irreproachable authenticity under Biller. As the program notes explain, the work was written only six months after the Christmas Oratorio<\/em> and features liberal borrowing from Bach\u2019s earlier works, yet any such knowledge hardly impedes upon the music\u2019s fresh exuberance as the trumpets open the work with a life-affirming proclamation. The ensemble\u2019s sense of pace was particularly striking in the cadence of the opening chorus \u201cLobet Gott in Seinen Reichen,\u201d and the Gewandhaus players\u2019 flowing but restrained body movement made it clear that they have this music in their bones. The fragile, glassy timbre of a boy soprano in the aria \u201cJesus, deine Gnadenblicke\u201d further evoked the original spirit of the work while the woodwinds accompanied in sensitive counterpoint. Closing the program was the motet \u201cDer Geist hilft under Schwachheit auf\u201d (BWV 226), performed at the burial of a St. Thomas headmaster in 1729. The music does not mourn but expresses gratitude to \u201cthe Spirit\u201d for helping mortals through their weakness. A quiet penitence prevailed beneath the painted vaults of the St. Thomas Church.<\/p>\n

Note to interested listeners: the St. Thomas Choir, for its 800th<\/sup> anniversary,\u00a0has released a compilation of live performances featuring works by Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn and others on the label Rondeau Productions.<\/em><\/p>\n

Back on the (non-denominational) scene in Berlin…<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Mahler Chamber Orchestra (MCO) and the alternative arts space Radialsystem teamed up last weekend for their second Radiale Nacht<\/em>, a rotating program of orchestral and chamber works featuring choreography by Sasha Waltz, live remixes and an after show. The format, scattered between the main hall, the lounge area, and the upstairs deck, exploits the ample space of the converted water pumping plant and creates a relaxed atmosphere in which musicians mingle casually with the audience. Guest artists Pablo Heras-Casado and Colin Jacobsen roamed between the bar and patio overlooking the Spree River before the concert, while one orchestral player dressed in black was mistaken for an onsite employee. The event was first launched in November with sponsorship by the pharmaceutical company Aventis in an effort to provide a Berlin base for the MCO, founded in 1997 as a touring ensemble with offices in the German capital. Radialsystem Intendant Jochen Sandig and MCO Intendant Andreas Richter hope to further cement the relationship despite the fact that they were denied city funding; Sandig reported in conversation that the local government is currently losing half a billion Euro over the delayed launch of the new airport.<\/p>\n

Tense cultural politics aside, the energy was high as the youthful members of the MCO took the stage with Jacobsen as concert master under the direction of Heras-Casado. The mostly Russian program, seen June 9, opened in the main hall with Alisa Weilerstein in Shostakovich\u2019s First Cello Concerto, a tour de force whose ferocity and emotional complexity the 30-year-old conveys with intuitive grace. She moved seamlessly between growling harmonics and whining melodies, shaping every passage with spontaneity and forward-moving inertia as she plunged into the depths of Shostakovich\u2019s despair and rage. The cellist maintained irreproachable beauty of tone throughout the entire rage of her instrument in the Cadenza, which moves cautiously from a slow lament and into wild disillusion. She was matched well by the strings\u2019 sinuous phrasing under Jacobsen and lean, buoyant textures that emerged through Heras-Casado\u2019s economical but commanding gestures, although the tone could have been angrier in the final Allegro<\/em> movement. As an encore, Weilerstein offered a fast movement from Bach\u2019s Cello Suites, whose spritely baroque character was somewhat of a sudden palate cleanser to the edgy textures of the previous work.<\/p>\n

Upstairs on the deck, she and Jacobsen joined with two members of the MCO for a very Berlinified rendition of Shostakovich\u2019s Eight String Quartet featuring live remixes by the DJ Georg Conrad. Jacobsen\u2019s bright, smooth tone led the group through the searing canonic development of the opening Largo<\/em>\u2014whose main theme is drawn from the First Cello Concerto, while Weilerstein\u2019s fierce playing found a spotlight in the following Allegro molto<\/em>. Then, in an unexpected twist, the musicians rested their bows as an interlude of house music whirred through the speakers. One can\u2019t deny that the dance beats were well suited to the views of graffitied industrial buildings across the Spree, yet it was quite awkward to watch the quartet sit onstage without playing. While Jacobsen and other audience members started nodding their heads in rhythm, it might have been more organic to have the musicians improvise over the DJ: the connection to Shostakovich\u2019s musical content was otherwise more than spurious. The effect was no less jarring when Conrad\u2019s atmospheric grooves returned a second time after a violin solo during the penultimate Largo<\/em> movement. The quartet otherwise formed a well-balanced whole, especially considering that they had only rehearsed the set-up that day.<\/p>\n

The program retained its progressive flair with an excerpt from Sasha Waltz\u2019s choreographed concert \u201cgefaltet,\u201d a Mozarteum commission originally unveiled earlier this season. The Divertimento in E-flat<\/em>, as re-experienced at the Radiale Nacht<\/em>, features a quartet of dancers in mock-ballet movements that range from sweeping, eloquently neo-baroque to angular, tick-like gestures while a trio plays at the corner of the stage. Waltz is strongest when she captures the sensuousness and symmetry of Mozart\u2019s music, while less congruent attempts to stamp the music with a post-modern sensibility are less effective for this viewer. Sandig\u2019s subsequent scenic arrangement of the Schnittke pastiche Moz-Art \u00e0 la Haydn <\/em>also incorporated dancers of Sasha Waltz & Guests in \u201cstructured improvisation\u201d to mirror the aleatoric demands of the score, which riffs on a theme by Mozart into polytonal madness. In keeping with Schnittke\u2019s original suggestions for blocking, the dancers begin in darkness along the aisles of the main hall before clustering with the dancers in a swarm onstage and running back to their original places. Heras-Casado was spotlighted toward the middle of a piece as a buffoon-like caricature of a conductor, waving his arms only for the sake of imposing control, only to be upstaged by a child dancer-turned-maestro with as commanding a head of curls.<\/p>\n

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Heras-Casado conducts the MCO (c) Holger Talinski<\/p><\/div>\n

The official program closed with Shostakovich\u2019s Ninth Symphony, considered the most neo-classical of his fifteen symphonies in its neat structure and cheerful character, although this is thoroughly tongue in cheek. The symphony was written at the end of World War Two in 1945, upon which Stalin accorded himself personal credit for the defeat of Germany. The dictator was not deaf to the satirical military allusions in this symphony, and announced soon thereafter that his regime could now find time to take appropriate measures toward art that so blatantly challenged his authority. The MCO\u2019s spirited playing did full service to the music\u2019s irony, knit together with fiery attacks under Heras-Casado, while wind solos emerged with confidence. Shostakovich\u2019s writing for the bassoon is particularly prominent in this work, with its humorous melodies in final Allegretto<\/em> that steer the orchestra away from triumph. The music continued in the lounge outside with Jacobsen\u2019s chamber arrangements of works by Astrud Gilberto and others. The quintet, which included Weilerstein at the cello, was clearly having a great time jamming to samba and tango beats, and the audience rewarded them with wine-imbibed cheers.<\/p>\n