jwilzewske: akamus

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin: Baroque with Attitude(s), Baroque with Mixed Taste(s)

J osé Bowen writes of the ‘illusion that there is such a thing as a neutral performance style’... I believe it is an illusion principally of the listener; but even then perhaps ‘illusion’ is not the right idea... If Bowen typifies the view of a scholar making a ‘forensic’ examination after the event, rather than that of a performer who, for an ulterior artistic purposes, may need to have faith in some starting point without going too far into its credibility, he is nevertheless right to imply that performers do always display an attitude towards their music.”
— Jon Dunsby, in Rink, p. 227.

B uilding and shaping narrative is fundamental to effective interpretation, for musicians to bring a composition to life in performance (see esp. William Rothstein, in the book edited by John Rink, link below). In regard to constructing exciting and coherent narratives, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin is second to none. Their performance last night was warmly received by Kansas Citians.

G.P. Telemann - Overture (Suite) in F minor, TWV55:f1
J.S. Bach - Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D major, BWV 1050
J.S. Bach - Violin Concerto in E major, BWV 1042
G. F. Handel - Concerto Grosso in F major, Op. 6, No. 2, HWV 32
G.P. Telemann - Concerto in E minor for Recorder & Flute, TWV52:e1.

T he Baroque slurred dotted-eighth-sixteenth ornament: this ‘punctuation’ conveys a certain tension, but it is not ‘tense’; it is instead athletic, like the taut muscles of a horse executing patterns in a dressage ring.

C onnecting the sixteenth note back to the dotted eighth with a slur has special and different meanings in Bach and Telemann and Handel. Telemann is more ‘French’ (see the excellent recent book by Steven Zohn, Baroque flutist and Assoc. Prof. Music History, Boyer College of Music & Dance, Temple Univ, link below, pp. 13ff). In the TWV 55:f1 Overture, there is an implied or interpolated ‘rest’ or suspension in the middle of the figure. By contrast, in the Akademie’s interpretations of Bach, the dotted-eighth-sixteenth slurs feel ‘pastoral’; these feel like distance is being traversed over soft earth or a hummocky pasture. In the minor keys, it feels solemn; it carries some gravitas. How wonderful to experience the diversity of German Baroque... the saturated colors and widely varying ‘feel’ and ‘sense’ that Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin impart to these pieces!

[30-sec clip, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Telemann - Concerto in A minor for 2 recorders, TWV 55:a2, 1.1MB MP3]

T he musicians had already moved through several approaches to color and texture — a dark-hued French overture; a pair of light, graceful Menuets; a supple, rubato-laden Sarabande; and a pair of full-throttle fast movements — before arriving at the Plainte, a second slow movement. Suddenly, the string sound was hushed, velvety and nearly motionless. The ensemble addressed the Adagio of Bach’s Violin Concerto in E (BWV 1042) similarly, and the effect was no less surprising the second time... But for sheer inventive oddity, Handel’s Concerto Grosso in F (Op. 6, No. 2) proved the evening’s most memorable performance. Building on the gracefully modulating chord progression at the start of the work’s Andante Larghetto, the players produced a lush sound that painted Handel as an early avatar of English pastoralism.”
— Allan Kozinn, review, NY Times.

T he Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin (which loosely translates to the Berlin Academy of Early Music) features about 15 players trained in techniques employed in the 17th and 18th centuries, when the orchestra itself was still a relatively new idea. Friday’s concert confirmed that the uproar is warranted. The compelling program of music by German Baroque composers was one of the highlights of the concert season. What sets this ensemble apart from many others is the combination of technical expertise, extraordinary energy and sheer musicality... From the outset, the ensemble produced a soft but vibrant sound that was beautifully balanced. As it progressed through the nine-movement suite, the group demonstrated not only the ability to play well, but to infuse each movement with a sound and shape that was well conceived and effectively delivered. For example, the second movement contained two contrasting minuets. Not only was the instrumentation different — two recorders, lute and cello as opposed to strings — but differences in articulation also helped define each section...”
— Timothy McDonald, review, Kansas City Star.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Ornamentation, Paradox and Temporality in Bach’s BWV 1052

E very composer ... is entitled to ... [prescribe] a correct method according to his intentions, and thus to watch over the preservation of his own honor.”
— Abraham Birnbaum, quoted in Wolff et al., 1998 pp. 346-7.

I n his transcriptions, Bach never proceeded in a mechanical way; rather, he strove to give the arrangement an identity of its own by subjecting the model to further development and exhausting its potential. This often involved the addition of fresh contrapuntal parts, the alteration of detail and structural modification.”
— Christoph Wolff.

Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin (Akamus) performs this evening in Kansas City. Among the works on the program is Bach’s D minor Concerto, BWV 1052.

There are all sorts of reasons for creating a transcription. Paying homage to the predecessor is one motive. Accomodating a particular instrumentation that happens to be available is another. Amplifying or extemporizing on historical themes is yet another. But in this piece one thing that strikes me is the focus on the personality—the personhood, the subjectivity, the existential situation—of the performers.

J.A. Bach’s pedagogical table of ornaments, for his son, J.S.

Agogic stresses (altered durations) and ‘stolen time’ are a way to create spontaneity. The appoggiaturas and anticipations steal time from the elements that they precede. And the improvisatory character of appoggiaturas alludes to individualism and ephemerality, as Richard Hudson says in his book, ‘Stolen Time’. Even the fingers’ dwelling on notes before releasing them borrows time, steals time.

Baroque experts maintain that ornamentation was just considered an aspect of the expression of the music, left properly to the performer’s discretion. That is, in general baroque composers weren’t obsessive about notating these embellishments explicitly—on account of the common musical language, a more homogeneous performance practice than existed before or since. Is BWV 1052 different from other baroque works in this regard?

Well, maybe. To me, there is in BWV 1052 a latitude for the anticipations that is especially large, and the notation provides no special clue to this. The anticipations in BWV 1052 can be played shorter than indicated or they can be played longer, without the risk of sentimentality or cliché that other pieces have. There’s a broad latitude, too, as to whether an anticipation can be slurred from the main note of the trill. There are instances where an anticipation can be both shortened and separated from the trill note by what’s called a ‘silence of anticipation’—détachè. These detachments naturally draw attention to the passage of time—what went before, what comes after, the ‘afterness’ enabled by the passage of a moment’s time. Whitespace.

The effect of this latitude is to convey a sense of aloneness—as when one realizes that the constraints that have cramped one’s style have been lifted, but one now has no particular idea of what to do. You have awakened from sleep and are full of energy, but all of your friends are asleep and the shops are all closed. The ‘silences of anticipation’ carry this existential weight. Very D minor.

But the melancholy minor key doesn’t mean ‘dour’. For example, just before the final tutti, the two-bar Adagio has a solo cadenza for the keyboardist. It is an interjection of surprise and drama. Each of these things is an enactment of aesthetic imagination on a small temporal scale that draws attention to the discretionary freedom and subjectivity of the performer (and the composer, and the listeners). More than anything, BWV 1052 is a confession of unceasing surprise, insistent upon the human condition’s paradoxical and simultaneous ... desolation? fecundity? correlations discovered and then superceded/supplanted/obliterated? The stealer of time is, in turn, stolen from.

I n music, speeding up or slowing down does not affect the fundamental structure ... Before each cycle of a rhythm is produced, a preparatory process propagates a rate parameter down through the hierarchy [of timekeepers]. This involves specifying the interval for the timer at one layer in the hierarchy by multiplying the interval in the next higher level by the appropriate fractional constant to achieve the desired ratio between the higher and the lower layer. This multiplicative process introduces overall positive correlations.”
— Katinka Ridderbos, Time, p. 97.