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EARLY MUSIC REVIEW
From Lamentation
March 31, 2001
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By Robert Commanday
An early-music concert is one of the last places I would expect to find a message relevant to our times and troubles, yet there it was, inescapable, in the program of the American Bach Soloists at the Berkeley First Congregational Church Saturday. Its title, "How Desolate Lies the City," was taken from the first work performed, Wie liegt die Stadt so wüste, one of three lamenting pieces by Matthias Weckmann that Jeffrey Thomas had programmed. Originally, these might well have been inspired by the plague that laid waste to Weckmann's city, Hamburg, in 1663. Plague or not, with the Thirty Years War barely over, he and his colleagues had ample reason to turn to settings of Lamentations, Jerusalem of old looming as a stunning symbol of their society and times.
And to us as well, applied to Jerusalem itself and much else in today's world. Weckmann's music speaks deeply to the mourning theme with an intensity something like rending of garments and heaping of ashes. The cutting nature of the dissonance, the dark richness of the texture, and the rhetorical setting of the text (from Jeremiah), with plaintive particulars, carry on the tradition of Weckmann's teacher, Heinrich Schütz.
Weckmann is an original, however, as the dramatic nature of his composition made clear. The soprano as narrator (Jennifer Ellis), with just organ accompaniment, expounds on the grief, describing Jerusalem as a widow, an unclean woman, a maidservant. At one point, the "weeping" is illustrated in the plangent fast repetition of an ornament. With accompaniment by two violins, three viols, and continuo, the bass (Curtis Streetman) is Jeremiah, in a contrasting role, and at the end the pair, in duet, express unrelieved despair.
Weckmann's Zion spricht (Zion speaks, texts from Isaiah), while offering some consolation in the image of a mother's love, pursues a plangent course of expression in the writing for alto (countertenor Carlos Mena), tenor (Nils Brown), and bass (Streetman). It is even more striking in rhetoric than Wie liegt. Weine nicht (Weep not, from Revelations), for the same trio of soloists, is the most contrasting of the three cantatas, with sections in lively tempo, striking pictorialism (the fanfare of the Apocalypse), and an Amen setting that is harmonically far out. Performed between Weckmann's first two cantatas, Ach, dass ich Wassers gnug hätte (Had I but water enough, text by Erdmann Neumeister), by Johann Christoph Bach, was another rich lamentation cantata, for alto and the same accompanying forces. Johann Christoph of Eisenach (1642–1703) was possibly the most brilliantly endowed of J.S.'s immediate forebears and was described by him as "a profound composer." The cantata bears this out, with its beautiful writing for the singer and the violins, an immediately communicative work. J.S. Bach arrived in the second half, after all this lamenting, to establish an assurance of faith, first in a lovely early cantata, Tritt auf die Glaubensbahn (Walk on the path of faith, BWV 152), and then with the supreme Gottes Zeit is die allerbeste Zeit (Actus Tragicus), (God's time is the very best time, BWV 106). Tritt auf hauntingly embroiders the bass and soprano solos with recorder (Aldo Abreu) and viola d'amore (George Thomson) lines, supported by oboe, gamba, and continuo. Infrequently heard, this cantata is a beauty, with its eloquence carried deeply in the texture and substance of the writing.
Gottes Zeit, often performed with chorus and orchestra, is perhaps a bit clearer with these light forces (just solo quartet , recorders, viols, and continuo). This is especially so with the dour fugue "It is the ancient law (that man must die)" and the bright fugal close, praising God for his consolation and promise of death as sleep, then paradise. The light ending, almost an airy disappearing act, is charming, a delightfully expressive touch. Conducting with a light touch, Jeffrey Thomas never imposed his personality or any undue emphases, allowing the masterpiece to build its marvelous balance, musically and thereby spiritually. Similarly, he was sensitive to the different styles, needs, and qualities of the other works, a manner that encouraged his excellent instrumentalists to bring out no more than was wanted.
Ellis sings with conviction and feeling, though her voice, a large and open instrument, occasionally startled with bursts of unexpected volume. It's a question of control and focus that are not quite there. The countertenor, Mena, was excellent, very musical and sympathetic. And the tenor, Brown, was a graceful singer. Their diction was the best. Streetman, while a musical and expressive singer, is really a low baritone, perhaps bass-baritone. To achieve a bass sonority, he covers his voice so consistently that he sacrifices resonance in the mask, variety of tone, nuance, and word clarity. The program as an entity was a bright and original conception, placing significant but neglected cantatas into juxtaposition that made an engrossing impression. Thomas and the American Bach Soloists presented a real point of view, handsomely. (Robert P. Commanday, the editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, was the music critic of The San Francisco Chronicle, 1965-93, and before that a conductor and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.) ©2001 Robert Commanday, all rights reserved |
