San Francisco Classical Voice

Bach's entire cycle of partitas for solo violin were given elegant and moving performances by Hopkinson Smith in transcriptions for the lute last Saturday at St. John's Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, and again the following day, at Grace Cathedral Chapel.

The wonderfully harmonious spiritual and intellectual allure of these partitas has always attracted players of other instruments. There are 18th century arrangements of various movements for cello, organ, and keyboard. Bach himself arranged the entire third partita for lute. Transcriptions, and even such stellar performances, however, do not mask the partitas' original identity.

There is a musical game in which players try to recognize a piece after hearing only its opening. The beginning of Bach's Sonata in G Minor for Violin Solo is easily recognized by all violinists and by many other musicians as well. The opening four-note chord is an icon for the entire sonata, resonating through all four movements and concluding the three movements. Indeed, since this chord opens Bach's important cycle of Six Sonatas and Partitas for Violin Solo, it alludes to the entire set. From an even broader perspective, it can be considered an icon for all violin music -- in part because these works have been central to the violin for over two centuries and in part because the chord so embodies violinistic sonority.

Bach's violin writing is very suggestive. Through the use of multistopped chords, arpeggiation, and melodic leaps, he creates the impression of two-, three-, or even four-voice polyphonic textures. This is a style of writing first developed by 17th century French lutenists and eminently suited to the lute. Violinists can, with intensity and skill, project the polyphony by being precise about the relative importance of each note and voice. But the lute, with its expanded range and its ability to play many notes simultaneously and to sustain voices in different registers, has its own advantages.

Smith is conservative in the changes he makes in adapting this music for the lute. Following the example of Bach's arrangement of the third partita, he limits himself to filling out harmonies and supplying implied bass notes. The Grave from the second Sonata opens with a bass line that moves down a minor scale from the tonic to the subdominant. The line, which begins and ends as a series of descending steps, jumps up a seventh, presumably because of the tuning of the violin. Smith uses the greater range of the lute to create a more powerful progression.

Each of the three sonatas opens with a slow movement that functions as a prelude to a following fugue. Smith imbued each of these increasingly complex works, even the one in C Major, with a brooding and dark-hued quality that heightened my anticipation for the coming fugue.

Bach's fugues are incredibly complex works that challenge any solo instrument. The three fugues in the set increase in complexity, from the independently popular dancelike fugue of the first sonata to the epic fugue of the third, with its use of almost every conceivable compositional device. Hopkinson Smith's performance of these difficult movements was outstanding. He articulated fugal entries clearly while using dynamics to focus on the larger structure of the movements, with their intensifying counterpoint, heightening chromaticism, increasing complexity, and changing textures, figurations, and countersubjects.

The three partitas, collections of Baroque dance movements, differ considerably from both the sonatas and each other. In the first partita, Allemanda-Corrente-Sarabande-Tempo di borea, each with a double or variation, Smith emphasized contrasting moods, not only between dance types but also between each movement and its double. In the second partita, Allemanda-Corrente-Sarabande-Giga-Ciaconna, he emphasized the serious mood and motivic connections of the whole and provided an emotionally powerful performance of the massive Ciaconna.

In the third partita, Preludio-Loure-Gavotte en rondeau-Menuets I & II-Bourée-Gigue, Smith gave the most joyful performance of the series, filled with exuberant ornamentation, rhythmic freedom, and delightful French dances, for which the lute is of course, beautifully suited.

(Scott Cmiel is a guitarist on the faculties of the San Francisco Conservatory and the University of California, Berkeley, SCmiel@aol.com )

©2000 Scott Cmiel, all rights reserved