by Virginia Newes
A solid of 28 top-notch singers and 31 interval instrumentalists assembled at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Corridor on Sunday afternoon for Boston Baroque’s newest (and 50th-Anniversary Season) traversal of J. S. Bach’s Mass in B Minor below the course of Martin Pearlman. The present had run on the WGBH Calderwood Studios on Saturday evening and will probably be out there via streaming HERE. The orchestral and vocal soloists all made a lot of their moments to face within the highlight, and the BB skilled refrain held up its hallowed custom of pace, accuracy, and excellent fugal entrances, with polished tone, if considerably missing in nuance. Kudos to the continuo group of chest organist Michael Beattie, vocal cellist Michael Untermann, and double bassist Motomi Igarashi for incisive help and decorative ensemble glue. One may yearn, although for the massive organ that Bach would have employed. Would that Boston had one at A 415 or {that a} half-tone-downward transposition with an A440 instrument would work. How concerning the meantone Fisk at Wellesley Chapel? It will produce some attention-grabbing wolfish moments. Christoph Wolff recounted for me:
The Sanctus was often heard in each Leipzig principal church buildings, St. Thomas and St. Nicolai. In each church buildings the accompanying organ was the massive instrument within the choir loft, invariably used for all of Bach’s sacred works written for Leipzig. (The St. Thomas College additionally owned a small chest organ of the sort most early music teams use right this moment, however it was solely used for marriage ceremony companies at eating places or non-public houses.)
Concerning the Kyrie and Gloria of 1733, there have been presumably two performances (none of them definitively documented): on the fealty service for the brand new Saxon Elector in April 1733 in St. Nicolai and at a non-public occasion in late July 1733 in Dresden’s St. Sophia’s Church, the place Wilhelm Friedemann Bach had simply been appointed organist. In each situations the massive organs would have been used.
Between 2010 and 2018, BMInt has revealed 14 critiques of Bach’s masterpiece. The late and much-missed Virginia Newes’s account of Boston Baroque’s 2016 interpretation reached the gold customary for elucidation. As a salute to her, we incorporate and adapt it right here with performer name-changes and my emendations and {qualifications} in editorial brackets. Newes anointed the B Minor Mass as a supremely bold work:
…within the sheer virtuosity of its rhythmic and melodic particulars, in its harmonic and contrapuntal mastery, in addition to within the grandeur of its total plan. Bach sought to surpass himself, his contemporaries, and his forbears on this setting of a liturgical textual content with an extended custom behind it.
The Mass explores fashionable in addition to retrospective contrapuntal strategies, numerous vocal and instrumental types, solo and ensemble writing with and with out obbligato devices, and large-scale and complicated scoring. In its first incarnation, the Mass in B Minor was a Missa Brevis, an abbreviated kind consisting solely of the Kyrie and the Gloria. This was the one form of Mass completed in Lutheran Leipzig, the place Bach served as music director of two of the principal church buildings. Such Lots had been additionally most well-liked in Dresden, the place the court docket was Catholic however a lot of the landed gentry remained Lutheran. The Missa in all probability occurred at a particular afternoon live performance on the church of St. Sophia in Dresden, the place Wilhelm Friedemann, Bach’s eldest son, was organist. On July 27, 1733, Bach devoted his Kyrie and Gloria to Friedrich August, elector of Saxony and later king of Poland, as a “small work of that science which I’ve attained in music.” As Christoph Wolff emphasizes in Johann Sebastian Bach. The Realized Musician, Bach, a much-admired organist, was right here presenting himself as no mere performer however a “musical scholar producing works of musical science.” In making the dedication he hoped for a court docket title, although he didn’t obtain one till 1736. Bach accomplished the Mass in 1748-49, including the actions of the Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei, a few of which, like these of the Kyrie and Gloria, had been tailored from earlier compositions.
Placing collectively this gigantic work with its disparate types and forces is not any imply feat, and Martin Pearlman’s strategy to the B Minor Mass appeared calculated to undertaking a way of unity and dramatic energy throughout extensively various musical textures and genres. On this he was principally profitable, using brisk tempos [only when appropriate and departing from his tendency to over articulate. Relaxing more than we expected, he brought the Mass in at an entirely reasonable, almost expansive 115 minutes. According to Jeffrey Gantz, Pearlman spanned it in 105 minutes in 2016, while Klemperer set the record for longueurs at 135. Never this time did he exhibit] breathless pace overtaking the power of singers and gamers to maintain up. [We agreed with Mrs. Newes in] hungering for a bit of extra flexibility, a breath right here and there. [What phrasing that did take place must have been developed at rehearsals, since Pearlman did very little visual shaping.]
Within the Kyrie, two fugues in contrasting types for five-part choir and full obbligato orchestra (however with out brasses or timpani) framed a duet for first and second sopranos [Amanda Forsythe and Sonja Tengblad] with violin obbligato and continuo accompaniment. [The two matched tones splendidly, though Forsythe, albeit gleaming in her tone, had a relentless habit of employing vibrato on phrase endings and flirting with the crowd. Tengblad used her very attractive tones with a bit more texturally considered restraint]. After a short introduction, the orchestra launched right into a stately Baroque-style fugue topic, its jagged compound melodic line that includes sighing two-note motives that had been set off (nearly as a further voice) by Pearlman’s crisp articulation. After the intense D main of the duet, the second Kyrie ventured into the darker key of F-sharp minor in stile antico method, evoking Renaissance polyphony however set towards a decidedly Baroque “strolling” bass line. The opening refrain of the Gloria burst in, full pressure, with components for 3 pure trumpets, timpani, flutes, oboes, bassoons, strings, and continuo within the resounding trumpet key of D main. Though the opening part, in quick triple time, appears to have been tailored from a misplaced instrumental concerto, it was skillfully included into the motion’s bigger structure, through which expansive actions for choir and orchestra body solo arias for every concertist of the choir, with an obbligato half awarded to every household of devices (strings, flutes, reeds, and brass). After the quick opening, a change of tempo and a second, gentler fugue on “Et in terra pax.” [Tamara Mumford, the extremely warm and irresistible mezzo-soprano], and concertmaster Christina Day Martinson duetted in “Laudamus te,” an aria of decorative arabesques set over a strolling bass. Right here the tempo appeared a shade too quick as each soloists and ensemble gamers scurried to maintain up with the relentless beat. [This time Pearlman gave the soloists room to breathe] “Gratias agimus tibi,” a four-part fugue on a chant motive, was taken from an earlier cantata. Forsythe and refulgent tenor Nicholas Phan] completely matched within the light roulades of their duet on “Domine Deus.”
Taking part in on a Baroque instrument of exceptionally pretty, rounded tone, Joseph Monticello delivered a fantastically articulated flute obbligato that constituted one of many night’s highlights. The duet’s quiet minor conclusion led instantly right into a somber “Qui tollis,” incorporating one other refrain from a pre-existing cantata. Mumford took the soloist within the alto aria that adopted, “Qui sedes advert dexteram Patris.” With [sensuous] heat within the higher notes and readability all through her vary, [Mumford] made a lot of the second. [David Dickey] offered the affecting and [completely secure] oboe d’amore obbligato on this lilting siciliano. The aria that adopted, “Quoniam tu solus sanctus,” started with a virtuosic solo for corno da caccia (looking horn), performed [with great bravura] by Todd Williams, accompanied by two bassoons [Andrew Schwartz and Allen Hamrick] that offered the right foil to the horn’s thrilling sound. Bass-baritone Kevin Deas introduced a candy higher vary and incisive rhythmic verve and a dignified strong decrease register, his [ornamentation] rivalling the horn in adroit virtuosity. At a close to breakneck tempo, the ultimate refrain, a fugue on “Cum sancto spiritu . . . Amen,” concluded the Gloria on a triumphant notice.
Just like the Gloria, the Credo is a fancy of choruses and arias that observe each other in apparently logical sequence. A number of components of the Credo once more derived from Bach’s earlier works; different mirrored his assiduous learning, copying, and directing Lots by composers from Palestrina to his personal contemporaries. Thus the opening refrain pairs a motet (“Credo in unum Deum”) in archaic model on the liturgical chant, for five-voice refrain plus two impartial violin components and continuo, with a concertato fugue for 4 voices and full orchestra. After the duet for soprano [Forsythe] and alto [Mumford], through which the 2 voices playfully alternate quick motives, three solemn choruses recount the lifetime of Christ from delivery to resurrection. The central motion, “Crucifixus,” is a passacaglia with the repeating chromatically descending bass that historically spelled mourning in each sacred and secular contexts. “Et resurrexit” is a concerto-like motion within the spirit of the Gloria’s opening refrain. After a solo aria, “Et in spiritum sanctum,” that joined Deas’s ringing baritone with two oboe d’amore, strict imitative counterpoint over a strolling bass returned in “Confiteor unum baptisma” (I acknowledge one baptism), reminiscent of the stile antico method of the opening Credo. [In a show-stopping manner], Pearlman brilliantly executed [Bach’s amazing] transition from the gradual, chromatically-tinged descent on the phrases “Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum” (And I await the resurrection of the useless) to the triumphant reinterpretation of the identical textual content that opens the next tutti in D main.
Virtually all sections of the Sanctus and Agnus Dei originated in earlier items. Bach composed the Sanctus itself in 1724 for six-voice refrain and three oboes. It opens on a large curtain of sound in easy harmonies over descending octaves within the bass, adopted by a sprightly triple-time fugue on “Pleni sunt coeli.” The Osanna, in the identical tempo, was tailored from a secular cantata written to have fun Friedrich August’s election as King of Poland. Right here the refrain regrouped to kind two opposing choirs of 4 components every. Phan’s sensitivity within the Benedictus equaled in expressive magnificence [Monticello’s exquisite] flute obbligato. Bach tailored the Agnus Dei from an earlier cantata as an alto solo with violins and continuo. [Mumford] delivered an intensely shifting interlude earlier than the ultimate “Dona nobis pacem [brought down the house with trumpets and drums…again].
Lee Eiseman is the writer of the Intelligencer
In 2016 John Ehrlich wrote on these pages of a BEMF model below Ton Koopman:
To believers and non-believers alike, this work undertakes a non secular journey, which undeniably bolsters and affirms religion in listeners and performers. Someway, we’re all the higher for having heard and carried out this.
