The California Bach Society's "Let Your Voices Joyfully Soar" in Berkeley's St Mark's Episcopal Church Saturday was an extraordinary concert. It was extraordinary in many ways, and left the perceptive listener affected and changed from the moment the program began. First of all, it was a re-creation of Bach's own Leipzig debut, presented by Warren Stewart for his own first concert in Advent and debut as the Society's new director.

In 1723, the Leipzig Town Council conducted a competition to find a new Kantor to lead the the city's sacred music program. Their choice, of course, was 38-year-old Johann Sebastian Bach. By late November Bach embarked upon the task of composing a complete cycle of new cantatas--one appropriate to each Sunday and feast-day of the church year. In the ensuing decades he completed no less than five complete cycles. More than two hundred cantatas survive.

Of special interest are the cantatas for that first Sunday in Advent 1723, Bach's debut upon the Leipzig stage, in a sense. In addition to many of the scores, Bach's own program for that Sunday survives, with the priceless addition of his personal notes, pencilled in shorthand in the margins.

Fast forward two hundred seventy-five years.

Warren Stewart, well known to Bay Area audiences as director of his ensemble Magnificat, which specializes in the re-creation of illustrious historical musical events, is selected by the California Bach Society as its new artistic director. "With the ensemble Magnificat..., I have had the opportunity to recreate liturgies as a context for works by Monteverdi, Gabrieli, Cavalli, and Cazzati, as well as to perform reconstructions of liturgies from the Dresden court chapel for the music of Schuetz", Stewart writes in his program notes. "It was inevitable that I would bring this interest to the California Bach Society."

So for his opener, Stewart selects the very cantatas Bach is known to have performed on the occasion of his Leipzig debut: No. 36, "Schwingt freudig euch empor", and Cantata 61, "Nun komm der Heiden Heiland". Under a disclaimer of "certain liberties with chronology and practice", Stewart incorporates one of Bach's 'little' masses, the Mass in G minor BWV 235. No matter. One so rarely has the opportunity to hear any of Bach's Lutheran Masses, let alone performed by a group so stylistically attuned and accomplished as this.

The true thrust of this presentation, however, lies in what else might have been performed on that occasion, as representative of the typical Leipzig worship service in which Bach's cantatas were heard. Surrounding and embedded in Bach's three concerted choral masterpieces is a litany, a plethora of musical styles and expressions, ranging from a motet of sixteenth century composer Jakob Handl, through very strange modal settings from the Leipzig Songbook set by Johann Hermann Schein,to contemporary works by Pachelbel and Buttstedt. The total experience is mind-expanding, eye-opening, and relentlessly German. The "alternatim" sung by the Prediger or minister (Hugh Davies, bass) and choir were hypnotic, teetering in a precarious and obscure mode, possibly it was the Phrygian.

If the conception of this event was brilliant, the execution was nearly so. The forces consisted of a quartet of soloists drawn from the 22-voice choir, and an eleven-piece instrumental ensemble--strings, oboes and continuo. Stewart kept things moving through the two-and-a-half hours of the service, accepting enthusiastic applause only at the pause and the end. The audience was invited to participate in three chorales the music for which music was printed in the program. I believe they would have been happy to participate more than they did, given a little more preparation and firmer direction.

The continuo group deserves special mention. Cellist Elisabeth Reed led conspicuously with glorious gamba-like tone from a very full-voiced cello. John Dornenburg doubled on a violone (contrabass gamba), while Kate Van Orden played the baroque bassoon with grace not usually associated with that instrument. Susan Harvey provided firm, reliable support on a small positif organ.

Most of the orchestra would look familiar to Philharmonia concert-goers. Led by concertmaster Rob Diggins they delivered a silvery string sound that complemented the singers beautifully. Sand Dalton and Allison Gangler belied the keylessness of their oboes; their oboes d'amore were like clotted cream.

The chorus was excellent, balanced, clear in concept and execution, the soprano sound warmer and rounder than the "English white sound", but avoiding any hint of operatic timbral nonsense that so diminishes the clarity of Bach's polyphony. I could not always hear the soloists as well as I would have liked, even though they moved up from the choir's position behind the orchestra to deliver their arias. They were Ruth Escher, Suzanne Elder Wallace, Neal Rogers, and Hugh Davies. As a quartet they sounded wonderful, especially in one movement sung from the rear of the church, near the organ.

Organist Elizabeth Harrison did a creditable job on short prefatory pieces by Bach, Pachelbel, and, if I am not mistaken, an improvisation of her own. Her postlude, "Nun komm der Heiden Heiland" BWV 599, served to sum up the concert, whose entire second half was infused with Luther's famous melody.

The California Bach Society will present Bach's "Passion According to St John", under Warren Stewart's direction, March 12-14. At the end of April, they present "Jesu meine Freude" celebrating polyphonic settings of Luther's chorales (including Bach's Motet on that text), and Heinrich Schuetz's "Musicalische Exequien". In addition, many of the same performers, under the banner of "Magnificat" will present a concert presenting Christmas cantatas of Dieterich Buxtehude December 18-20 in Berkeley, San Francisco and Palo Alto.

(Joseph Spencer is a longtime early music devotee, who divides his time between being a merchant (The Musical Offering in Berkeley, an early music CD store and cafe/bistro), a record producer (Wildboar Recordings and others), and radio broadcaster (Chapel Court & Countryside, KKHI, San Francisco, 9-11 Sunday mornings, also KKGO, Los Angeles, 7-9 am Sundays)

©1998 Joseph Spencer, all rights reserved