Angela Hewitt BACH French Overture / Italian Concerto / Four Duets / Two Capriccios (12 /15)

It wasn’t until 1731, the year he turned forty-six, that Johann Sebastian Bach published his Opus 1, the six Partitas for solo keyboard that make up the first volume of his Clavierübung (Keyboard Practice). It proved to be such a success (we know of at least two printings) that four years later a second volume appeared bearing the title page:

Second part of the Keyboard Practice,
consisting of a Concerto after the Italian Taste and
an Overture after the French Manner,
for a harpsichord with two manuals.
Composed for music lovers, to refresh their spirits,
by Johann Sebastian Bach,
Capellmeister to His Highness the Prince of
Saxe-Weissenfels and Directore Chori Musici Lipsiensis.
Published by Christoph Weigel, Junior.

By choosing to write both an Italian Concerto and a French Overture, Bach not only demonstrated his skill in translating to the keyboard two of the most popular orchestral genres of the time, but also showed how marvellously he had assimilated the prevalent national styles of composition and performance, yet always sounding unmistakably like himself. The musical battle between the French and Italians goes as far back as Charlemagne, who returned from Rome with a group of Italian musicians, much to the displeasure of their French colleagues. Quarrels were still raging when Italian musicians were brought to Paris to sing in operatic productions in the early 1700s. Mattheson, the German composer and theorist, wrote in 1713: ‘The Italians may well boast as they please of their voices and of their arts, but let them try to write a real French overture, and in its true character at that … This means that French instrumental music has something particular to itself; although the Italians make the greatest efforts to excel in their sinfonias and in their concerts, which, truly enough, do not lack beauty, one has to prefer, however, a lively French overture.’ Not everybody stood up for the French. In 1753 Rousseau made the provocative remark: ‘The French have no music and cannot have any, but if they ever do, it will be all the worse for them.’ He also stated that ‘French singing is like an uninterrupted and unbearable barking’.

In the midst of these rivalries, German music was neglected. Le Cerf de la Viéville wrote that Germany ‘was not great in music, their compositions being as harsh and heavy as their genius’. Handel was no doubt the first German composer to be presented in France, but not until 1736. Bach was ignored. The latter faced criticism closer to home when Johann Adolf Scheibe wrote in his journal Der Critische Musicus (1737): ‘The great man would be the object of admiration if he possessed more pleasantness and made his compositions less turgid and sophisticated, more simple and natural in character.’ Bach was very hurt by this attack, and asked a friend, J A Birnbaum, professor of rhetoric at the University in Leipzig, to reply. The battle went on for months and ended in a stalemate. Yet in 1739 Scheibe published a review of Bach’s Italian Concerto that seemed to reverse his earlier decision: ‘… pre-eminent among works known through published prints is a clavier concerto of which the author is the famous Bach in Leipzig … Since this piece is arranged in the best fashion for this kind of work, I believe that it will doubtless be familiar to all composers and experienced clavier players, as well as to amateurs of the clavier and music in general. Who is there who will not admit at once that this clavier concerto is to be regarded as a perfect model of a well-designed solo concerto? But at the present time we shall be able to name as yet very few or practically no concertos of such excellent qualities and such well-designed execution. It would take as great a master of music as Mr Bach, who has almost alone taken possession of the clavier.’

Scheibe was a follower of the new ‘Art Galant’ which favoured the more melodic style of Bach’s sons rather than the formal counterpoint of their father. Perhaps that is why he was so taken with the Italian Concerto, as it leans more in this direction. All through his life, Bach learned by copying out works of other composers, among them Vivaldi, Albinoni, Corelli and Marcello. He was particularly drawn to the concerto grosso and transcribed many by Vivaldi for keyboard. Writing for a two-manual harpsichord gave him the opportunity to distinguish between tutti (full orchestra) and solo passages, indicating them with the words forte and piano. A pianist, having only one keyboard, must do this by changing dynamic level and tone colour. This distinction, however, is far from clear-cut all the time, and still requires a great deal of imagination on the part of the player. Often one hand is marked at a different dynamic level from the other.

Patricia Petibon NOUVEAU MONDE Baroque Arias and Songs

With Christopher Columbus (yes, him from 1492) joining Harnoncourt, William Christie and Savall on the dedicatees’ list, Petibon’s new release explodes like an alt-folk concept album. As Basle’s La Cetra, plus certain South American obbligato instruments, Baroque and baroll behind the French soprano, it can get loud – José de Nebra’s opening zarzuela aria (1744) sounds like an attempt at all four Handel Coronation Anthems in less than six minutes while Petibon’s contribution mixes a tale of shipwrecked love with yelping early salsa-style vocalises. For contrast there’s a serene ‘Greensleeves’ and a wonderful, painfully impassioned (if exotically pronounced) ‘When I am laid in earth’ – with most imposing continuo – to vary the emotional dynamic. Then the mocking demons in Charpentier’s Médée and their grungy accompaniment (the effect accentuated by the timbre of the ancient instruments) sound like evident contemporaries of Purcell’s witches and sailors. Andrea Marcon’s band rightly get a break of their own, a dance actually, in further Charpentier before their whistles and thundersheets kick up the storm that nearly overwhelms heroine Emilie in Les Indes galantes. We may be on the way to a ‘new world’ – Petibon’s booklet interview links up influences which include Brazilian rock radio, Michael Haneke’s Don Giovanni and Cortés’s Conquistadors – and we reach it eventually at Purcell’s ‘Fairest isle’ (the English again rather special) but there’s sure plenty of well-acted vocal heartbreak on the way. And folk rock – try the version of the traditional ‘J’ai vu le loup’ or the Peruvian ‘Tornada La Lata’.

Like her equally Spanish-tinged ‘Melancolia’ album – but with totally other colours – ‘Nouveau monde’ is a tightly thought-through and arranged and compelling programme, a tour de force for its performer/ compiler, most atmospherically recorded (Rainer Maillard) in Basle’s Martinskirche. Compulsive, repeatable listening.

(Mike Ashman)

Angela Hewitt BACH The Well-Tempered Clavier (8, 9, 10 & 11 /15)

If one had to decide on the most influential works by Bach over the years since his death, the two most likely choices might be the St Matthew Passion and The Well-Tempered Clavier. While it was the Passion that—in Mendelssohn’s arrangement and ‘first’ performance of 1829—catapulted Bach into the forefront of German musical culture, the influence of The Well-Tempered Clavier has been more continuous, widespread and often hidden from the glare of publicity. What is remarkable for a work so old is that so many music lovers, musicians, composers and scholars of all levels have consistently found something worthwhile in it. This breadth of purpose is evident in Bach’s title page for the first volume: ‘For the profit and use of musical youth desiring instruction, and especially for the pastime of those who are already skilled in this study.’ In other words, Bach himself designed the collection as something to be both supremely instructive and also pleasurable. The lexicographer Ernst Ludwig Gerber recalled that his father had heard these pieces at first hand, played by Bach himself; the composer apparently played through the collection three times during the course of their lessons, after both had tired of more formal study. Much of Bach’s later output seems to have been designed to provide authoritative examples, counteracting the growing taste for music that catered primarily to ephemeral fashions. But, almost paradoxically, many aspects of The Well-Tempered Clavier pointed as much to the future as to the past. Most obvious is Bach’s comprehensive survey of all the keys available within the tonal system. Although these had been theoretically possible for over a century, it was only relatively recently that keyboard instruments had been tuned in such a way as to render the less familiar keys more usable. Moreover, the very technique of keyboard fingering (and the standard proportions of keyboards) had hitherto excluded keys employing a large number of sharps and flats. A few composers before Bach had come close to covering most keys in a single collection (J C Fischer’s Ariadne musica of 1702 was an obvious influence on Bach) and the theorist Johannes Mattheson gave short examples in every key, but not fully fledged pieces. The complex genesis of Bach’s collections shows that he experimented with several ways of grouping pieces by key, before settling on the final scheme of covering the entire chromatic scale, from C, with the pieces presented in first the major and then the minor mode.
The very genre of ‘Prelude and Fugue’ might not have become so firmly established without Bach’s two encyclopaedic cycles. He inherited from older generations the genre of the ‘Praeludium’ (alternatively ‘Fantasia’ or ‘Toccata’), a loose amalgam of free and fugal elements that can alternate in unpredictable ways. Certainly, there was an increasing tendency to distill these two elements into two separate pieces, but, in Bach’s youth, this was still only one option among several. What probably appealed to Bach about the pairing of prelude and fugue was the fact that these two corresponded to the two main sides of his musical personality. On the one hand, he was renowned well beyond his homeland as a supreme virtuoso performer who could improvise with total spontaneity (a fact that is all too easily forgotten today when he is often labeled as a ‘composer’s composer’); on the other, he was undoubtedly the greatest musical thinker of his age, someone who could see inventive potential in any theme and who relished working out his thoughts on paper. The prelude–fugue pairing thus encapsulates Bach’s spontaneous, performative urge together with his more abstract, compositional thought. But it would be a mistake to suggest that all the preludes are ‘free’ and all the fugues are serious and ‘strict’. Indeed, having made the initial distinction, Bach positively relished mixing up these categories: a fugue might sound as characterful or carefree as a prelude, and a prelude may contain the complex musical devices that would normally be associated with fugue. One of the greatest aspects of Bach’s achievement as a composer was his ability to explore and ‘research’ a genre to a depth well beyond the norms of the day.
While it is customary to believe that Bach’s reputation plummeted in the latter half of the eighteenth century, this is really only true of his outward public image. For works such as The Well-Tempered Clavier had tremendous influence ‘behind the scenes’: Beethoven could play large sections by the age of eleven, and Mozart kept it close to hand throughout the last decade of his life. The fact that such seminal figures had access to the work before it was available in print (the first editions appeared over fifty years after Bach’s death) suggests that there must have been an extremely healthy network of manuscript copies. Soon after The Well-Tempered Clavier entered the public field at the outset of the new century, the concept of grouped preludes, often with pedagogic intention, became commonplace: witness the plethora of preludes (or ‘studies’) from composers such as Czerny, Chopin, Debussy, Hindemith and Shostakovich.
Why did such seemingly complex and ancient music rise to fame in the age of Romanticism? Schumann viewed The Well-Tempered Clavier as a collection of ‘character pieces’, thus aligning them with his own value system. But many of the pieces are indeed ‘character pieces’, in that they grasp a particular affect, compositional device or quality of movement, exploring this to the finest detail. If each piece is bound by ‘rules’, these are rules developed for this piece alone, often in the course of its individual progress. What to Bach may have been an exploration of the implications of a single inventive complex seems to have struck the Romantic generation as the manifestation of a certain refinement of spirit accessible only through the greatest of music, an individuality intimating a broader universality. Bach’s seemingly archaic musical world, steeped in an all-embracing religious order and sharing concepts of music that stretch back to Pythagorean times, was born afresh in the new era of Romantic aesthetics, and has remained an indispensable element of Western culture ever since.

Gustavo Dudamel / Los Angeles Philharmonic BERLIOZ Symphonie Fantastique

An international sensation and instant star in Deutsche Grammophon's stable while only in his twenties, Gustavo Dudamel won kudos worldwide for his extraordinary musicality, wide expressive range, astute technical mastery, and acute perception of what works in a score, and he has brought great vitality and excitement to his performances of the Romantic symphonic repertoire. His 2007 release of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 5 with the Simón Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela brought critical praise, and his live follow-up with Hector Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique with the  Los Angeles Philharmonic is sure to do the same. What both recordings reveal is Dudamel's amazing ability to reshape whole passages of overly familiar music into fluid and seemingly spontaneous renderings that sound almost like re-creations and make listeners really think about what they're hearing. You may not always agree with Dudamel's choices, and his handling of the music may at times seem a bit too calculated, but once you are caught up in a performance, you are compelled to pay attention to everything this conductor does. Since the Symphonie fantastique is one of the most famous warhorses ever, it is always up to conductors to make something new of it, though few think it through as clearly or manage it as creatively as Dudamel, who makes the scenes of this programmatic symphony really feel like vignettes in an especially vivid film. He also finds ways to make sense of Berlioz's quirky rhythms, disjointed figurations, disorienting counterpoint, and sudden "scene changes," so that even the first-time listener can follow the piece's trajectory and make the necessary musical connections to the hallucinatory narrative. But beyond the specific touches that make this performance extraordinary, one has to appreciate Dudamel's artistic audacity and brilliance with the orchestra, which is completely inspired and utterly willing to play its collective heart out in this electrifying performance. Deutsche Grammophon's sound is spectacular from start to finish, and the enthusiastic ovation at the end of this recording is totally warranted. (Blair Sanderson)

Angela Hewitt BACH The Six Partitas (6 & 7 / 15)

When Johann Sebastian Bach left his post as Kapellmeister at the court of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen in 1723 to go to the more prestigious city of Leipzig as Kantor of the Thomaskirche he had no idea of the troubles that awaited him there. In Cöthen he had spent six very happy years composing mainly instrumental music, including the Brandenburg Concertos, the first volume of the Well-Tempered Clavier, and the French Suites. He had, however, hesitated before accepting the new position, as the switch from Kapellmeister (orchestra leader) to Kantor (director of church music) was a step downwards in status, but he knew that Leipzig would be a better place to educate his children. His first wife had died suddenly in 1720 leaving him with three sons and a daughter (three others, including twins, had died in infancy), but a year later he married Anna Magdalena Wülcken, a professional singer sixteen years his junior and the mother-to-be of thirteen more Bachs. Although his income increased with the move to Leipzig, the high cost of living in that city made things difficult for such a large family. As part of his duties as Kantor, Bach was responsible for music in the choir school, at the university, and on civic occasions. None of the authorities involved appreciated Bach’s genius (one of them even dared to say that Bach showed ‘little inclination to work’!), and their penny-pinching and narrow-mindedness were a constant source of annoyance. More than anything, Bach wished to upgrade the instruments, instrumentalists and singers at his disposal, but was repeatedly refused the necessary funds to do so. Many of his wonderful cantatas – a new one incredibly dished up every Sunday – were perhaps given less than perfect first performances.

It was during his early Leipzig years that Bach took it upon himself to publish a work for the first time. It now seems incredible to us that out of one thousand or so compositions only a dozen were published in his lifetime. Even more astounding is the fact that the six Brandenburg Concertos (nowadays almost ‘pop’ music) had to wait one hundred years after the composer’s death for publication. Bach’s contemporaries who wrote more accessible music, such as Telemann and Handel, had no trouble getting their music published, and even received royalties. Bach’s ‘Opus 1’ (as he called it, even though he had already been composing for twenty years) was a set of six Partitas for keyboard, ‘offered to music lovers in order to refresh their spirits’. The first Partita in B?flat major appeared alone in 1726, and one followed each year until the six were published together and put on sale at the 1731 Leipzig Fair. These works were to form Part I of the Clavierübung (‘Keyboard Exercise’). Although they were never reprinted during Bach’s lifetime, they were, according to the composer’s first biographer Forkel, a success: ‘This work made in its time a great noise in the musical world. Such excellent compositions for the clavier had not been seen and heard before. Anyone who had learnt to perform well some pieces out of them could make his fortune in the world, and even in our time [1802], a young artist might gain acknowledgement by doing so, they are so brilliant, well-sounding, expressive and always new.’

‘Partita’ is simply another name for a suite of dance movements in the same key formed to make a satisfactory whole. The titles ‘Partita’ and ‘Clavierübung’ had already been used by Bach’s predecessor at the Thomaskirche, Johann Kuhnau, for two collections of keyboard works in 1689 and 1692. As Bach never strayed far from home (in his whole life he never went beyond a radius of 200 miles), he only became acquainted with the music of France, the leader in the field of dance music, and Italy by copying scores he found in various libraries. Albinoni, Vivaldi, Corelli, Couperin – all were absorbed by him, but then turned into something greater. Bach’s earlier French Suites, works of great beauty and imagination, are on a much smaller scale than the six Partitas and begin with the traditional Allemande. The English Suites, the first set of six suites he composed, occupy a middle ground between the two, opening with a concerto-like Prelude. When we become familiar with the Partitas we tend to identify them immediately with their diverse opening movements – each making an important initial statement about the character of the work as a whole. Two Partitas, the third and sixth, appear in earlier versions as part of the 1725 Notebook of Anna Magdalena Bach. Although Bach probably never expected anyone to perform these pieces complete in public, they are nowadays among his most popular concert vehicles for both harpsichordists and pianists.

Angela Hewitt BACH French Suites / Little Preludes / Sonata in D minor / Prelude and Fugue in A minor (4 & 5 / 15)

Sonata in D minor BWV964

Both the Sonata in D minor, BWV964, and the Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV894, are virtuoso pieces, intended to show off the ability of the performer. They are consequently very effective in recital. Both exist in versions for other instruments, the sonata being Bach’s own transcription of his solo Violin Sonata in A minor, BWV1003, and the prelude and fugue appearing recycled as the outer movements of the Triple Concerto for flute, violin, solo harpsichord and strings, BWV1044. The keyboard arrangement of the sonata no doubt annoys violinists as so many of the horrendous difficulties to be overcome on the violin are easily rendered by two hands. There are many reports handed down of Bach playing his unaccompanied string pieces at the keyboard, so although this transcription again only survives in a copyist’s hand (that of Altnikol, his son-in-law), its authenticity is not really questionable. The polyphonic texture implied in the original is here beautifully realized without great changes to the melodic line. The second movement was admired by Bach’s Hamburg contemporary Mattheson, who praised his ability to construct such a long fugue from so short a subject. It is indeed a tour de force, demanding great concentration and skill (and probably scaring away many a player). The lovely F major andante brings us a moment of complete repose and tenderness. The finale is almost completely identical to the original, with the one line of music being divided between the two hands. (from notes by Angela Hewitt © 1995)

Prelude in C major BWV924

The eighteen Little Preludes are among the most valuable pieces ever written for beginners. They form a bridge between the easiest pieces of the Anna Magdalena Notebook (1725) and the Two-part Inventions, giving the player a wonderful introduction to voice imitation, pedal points, cadenza-like passages, and basic ornamentation. They cover many different moods, from the affirmative (all three preludes in C major), to the tender (the C minor minuet, BWV924), the improvisatory (BWV940), the joyful (BWV927 and 937), and the very grand (BWV928). The C minor prelude, BWV999, was originally written for the lute. Many of them are far from easy (the A minor, BWV942, for instance), and require quite complicated fingering (BWV943). Even in these little pieces, big decisions have to be made concerning tempo, phrasing, articulation, dynamics, and timing, and this challenges the teacher as much as the student. Bach wrote them for his son Wilhelm Friedemann and other pupils, but never grouped them into any particular arrangement. Like the French Suites, many of them survive only in copies made by another hand. There are several traditional groupings of which I have chosen one, changing the order of the first six to make a more pleasing progression in performance. For me they recall fond childhood memories, and are as fascinating now as they were then.

(from notes by Angela Hewitt © 1995)

Prelude in E major BWV937

Johann Sebastian Bach perhaps remains the greatest composer of what may in the best sense be called ‘educational music for youthful performers’. His Prelude in E major is the penultimate of Six Little Preludes while the Praeambulum in G minor is from the Little Keyboard Book written for his son Wilhelm Friedemann – two groups of pieces well designed to cultivate precise phrasing, clear part-playing and buoyant rhythm, among other qualities. (from notes by Max Harrison © 1986)

Prelude and Fugue in A minor BWV894

Both the Sonata in D minor, BWV964, and the Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV894, are virtuoso pieces, intended to show off the ability of the performer. They are consequently very effective in recital. Both exist in versions for other instruments, the sonata being Bach’s own transcription of his solo Violin Sonata in A minor, BWV1003, and the prelude and fugue appearing recycled as the outer movements of the Triple Concerto for flute, violin, solo harpsichord and strings, BWV1044.

Bach’s creative genius flourished during his time as court organist (and later Konzertmeister) to Duke Wilhelm Ernst in Weimar (1708–1717). There he not only composed most of the great organ works, but also transcribed twenty-one concertos (most of them by Vivaldi) for organ and harpsichord. Influences of both these genres can be heard in the A minor prelude and fugue, composed towards the end of his tenure. The prelude, with its opening motive in the right hand immediately repeated by the left, is in concerto style, alternating between tutti and solo passages. Triplets give it constant direction, interrupted only by cadenza-like passages, the last one reminding us of the D minor harpsichord concerto. The gigue fugue is in perpetual motion, never once letting up. The fact that Bach again uses triplets to propel it forward can, if one is not careful, provide for little contrast with the prelude. It is perhaps best to emphasize the difference in time signatures (4/4 for the prelude, 12/16 for the fugue). Would Bach have been able to improvise such a fugue on the spot? I think it most probable, for at that he was unbeatable! (from notes by Angela Hewitt © 1995)

 

Patricia Kopatchinskaja / Vladimir Jurowski PROKOFIEV & STRAVINSKY

 

A masked ball. Two figures came up to me. One with a large wig, a long nose, and a black poodle on a leash. The other dark red, with an immense tear glistening in his eye . . .

‘Who are you?’ I ask.
‘We are the souls of the two pieces that you have recorded. We’re slightly related.’

The one with the long nose and the poodle says,

‘I start every movement with a slap. Did you find it amusing to slip inside me? ‘

‘Oh yes,’ I answer, ‘but tell me – how could your master have brought you into the world without those cheeky opening chords? Would you be here at all? And your disguise – is it supposed to be a provocation? Sergey Sergeyevich said it was all just “Bach with smallpox” . . . But, if you don’t mind my saying so, there isn’t much Bach there at all: where are the piety, the deep seriousness? There’s only his wig and his Baroque costume. And, wrapped up in that, pagan energy and sarcastic wit. Did the devil himself instil that in your master during a card game?’ The poodle looked at me suddenly.

The other mask was silent. I nudged him and said: ‘I was the melody of love in you. Did you feel that?’
The mask was silent.
‘I heard the ticking clock of destiny beneath me, but I flew over everything, worried about nothing, because I knew I had become a part of eternity . . .
There was melancholy, resignation . . .’
At the beginning, a dark prophecy. An old Russian woman in the fog . . . Was your master not running away from himself, feeling a fracture deep inside him? Did he not take refuge in a childlike dream world? Does the first move- ment not evoke images from fairy tales old and new, like Chagall? But alongside the human world is another one, inhuman, mechanical, the hum and ticking of machines and clock mecha- nisms. And constant scene changes, as in ballet or films. And in the last movement, the castanets, which to my ears don’t sound so much Spanish as like rattling skeletons. Really it’s all very eerie, a ‘danse macabre’ leading to death by exhaustion!

The mask was silent. (Patricia Kopatchinskaja)

The two violin concertos coupled on this recording display as many affinities as they do divergences. Both stem from creators in conflict with their native Russia – one choosing to return there, the other settling permanently in exile; both belong to the aesthetic of the ‘return to order’ observed from 1920 onwards and characterised by the reappropriation of models from the past. If Prokofiev preserves the traditional bases of the concerto, he combines them with a search for a new lyricism. As for Stravinsky, he reworks tried and trusted models while offering a deliberately neutral, distanced expressivity.