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EARLY MUSIC REVIEW
December 20, 2003
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By Anna Carol Dudley
Philharmonia Baroque's Christmas offering this year featured Andrew Manze, violinist and guest conductor, leading an all-Bach program: Cantata #110, "Unser Mund sei voll Lachens" ("Make our mouths full with laughter"), the Violin Concerto in A minor, and the Magnificat in E-flat Major.
Elizabeth LeGuin's lucid program notes examined the importance of textual
influences in Baroque vocal music. For Vivaldi, the inspiration was opera;
for Bach, the Lutheran service. LeGuin feels forced to undermine her own
argument by noting that the music of the opening chorus of Cantata #110 is
the allegro lifted right out of Bach's Fourth Orchestral Suite. There is
less contradiction in her theory than meets the ear. Much Baroque
instrumental music is infused with rhetorical gestures — rhetoric having
been an important part of everyone's education and, in Leipzig,
everyone's aural experience in church. The singers of this first movement
need to be able to approach it instrumentally, but the music is not
inconsistent with the jubilation of the text.
Saturday night at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley, Manze's
playing of the concerto was riveting, his conducting less effective.
Seldom have the Philharmonians begun a concert with such a sloppy attack,
and seldom have their dynamics been so out of balance. The four game vocal soloists tore into the opening allegro of the cantata with gusto, making
their "tongues full with praises." But they were pretty well swamped by
the orchestra. Either Manze was unconcerned with balance problems, or this
performance was a powerful argument against the theory that Bach's choruses should be sung one on a part. The continuo for the first aria was too loud for the two obbligato flutes, and the alto aria and a soprano-tenor duet
were uncertain rhythmically. Finally, near the end of the cantata, bass
Jeffrey Fields came on with his aria, "Wacht auf" (Wake up!) and nailed
it, in tight ensemble with trumpeter John Thiessen and the orchestra.
In the concerto for violin solo and strings the ensemble was tight indeed. Manze played alternatingly to the orchestra and out into the hall, but this repertoire hardly needs a conductor for the Philharmonia strings. The band picked up on every nuance of rubato and dynamics; Manze does a lot of rhythmic bending and is not afraid of a pianissimo, playing from a whisper to full out, always beautifully in the string. From the first allegro, the communication between soloist and orchestra was strong and intimate. The andante was particularly beautiful, the violin singing over a heartfelt bass line worthy of one of Bach's great Passions. The final allegro danced amidst fireworks of ornamentation. Manze adds a lot of his own notes in playing Bach, but the amazing figuration in the last movement is Bach's. The Magnificat in E-flat Major turns out to be the familiar Magnificat in D, in an earlier version with some minor changes and the addition of four movements on Christmas texts which are not part of Mary's Biblical monologue. Before the concert, the audience was informed that Jeffrey Fields had been brought in at the last minute because the announced bass-baritone soloist had become ill in the course of the rehearsals. Fields, a member of the regular Philharmonia chorus, made a splendid contribution to the concert. He has an attractive and ample voice, solid rhythmic sense and strong feeling for the text. He provided the reliable bass foundation in every chorus, and shone in his solos and ensembles. The other singers were from the non-Lutheran world of opera, and not exactly Vivaldi even. "Et exultavit" (And my spirit hath rejoiced) was taken at a pretty good clip, and soprano Greta Feeney was fully up to it. Likewise tenor Jonathan Boyd in "Deposuit potentes" (He hath put down the mighty). But soprano Saundra DeAthos and mezzo-soprano Katherine Rohrer were more in the Puccini line, sensitive to the text but not to Bach's musical language. The dance basis of his music escaped them, and little swells came in at inappropriate moments, resulting often in rhythmic and tuning inaccuracy. They could learn much from hearing Andrew Manze play. His is by no means a "sewing machine" approach, but every tug at the rhythm and every ornamental elaboration is rooted in Bach's music.
(Anna Carol Dudley is a singer, teacher, member of the faculties of the University of California, Berkeley, and San Francisco State University [lecturer emerita] and director emerita of the San Francisco Early Music Society's Baroque Music Workshop.)
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Andrew Manze