The Shining Star of the Netherlands Bach Society

04 Wednesday Dec 2019

Posted by cantatasonmymind in Advent, Cantatas, Leipzig, Trinity, Weimar

Tags

16th Sunday after Trinity, Alex Potter, All of Bach, All Souls, Bachvereniging, BWV 161, BWV 36, Grote Kerk Naarden, Hans van der Woerd, Marco Borggreve, Netherlands Bach Society, Nieuwe Kerk Den Haag, Shunske Sato, St. Matthew Passion, The Hague, Thomas Hobbs, Zsuzi Tóth

Shunske Sato, concertmaster since 2013 and artistic director since 2018 of the Netherlands Bach Society. Photo by Dana van Leeuwen.

To find the Weekly Cantata Advent Calendar, please click here.

Several people have asked me what made me start writing for this blog again. The answer is simple: Shunske Sato’s violin playing in the “Mein Verlangen” tenor aria from Cantata 161 Komm, du süsse Todesstunde. I had already heard that Sato was “a good one” from people with authority on the matter, and had enjoyed listening to his recordings, but it took these live concerts to experience the magic that happens when he is a soloist in a Bach aria.

During a visit to my home country, the Netherlands, I attended the Netherlands Bach Society’s “All Souls” concerts on October 31 in the Grote Kerk in Naarden and on November 3 in the Nieuwe Kerk in The Hague. I had been unsure how to talk about these concerts in the framework of this blog, especially now that it’s more than a month ago and we’re in Advent already (yes there is Advent music in this post, please keep reading) and there is no recording of these concerts.

Solo sonatas and partitas on All of Bach

But it turns out that this week is the perfect time for a spotlight on Shunske Sato, because this Thursday December 5, 2019, the Netherlands Bach Society will publish the final episode of his series of solo violin sonatas and partitas on All of Bach, their online video archive of Bach performances. Just click on this link and the entire series is right there, under “recently added.”

Sato was appointed concertmaster of the Netherlands Bach Society in 2013, and became their artistic director in June 2018. For the concerts I attended, he was concertmaster only, having invited alto Alex Potter to program and lead this production. (Alex Potter deserves a blog post too, but that will come later). By inviting a different guest director for each program, Sato has breathed fresh air into the he group of musicians I feel.

Instead of the standard biographies, the program booklet featured personal stories from Sato and the four vocal soloists. As a person who’s produced many program books in her lifetime, I felt this was a breath of fresh air too. And as a mom of two teenagers who are finding their way through school and life, I especially liked this part from Sato’s story:

“Things got tricky in my teens: I began spending lots of time away from school playing concerts, and my grades at school were impressively low (except for French and Maths). Giving up on school, I often spent my weekdays at my favorite bookstore instead and read about history, computer programming and linguistics, and composed string quartets. Saturdays always came as a relief: classes and lessons at the Juilliard School in New York, where hung out with my “real” friends.”

Playing Weimar style

Back to what happened in the concert in Naarden on October 31. For this entire program, the violinists were playing one-on-a-part, the same way it was probably done in Weimar, where Bach first performed Cantata 161 on the small organ loft in 1716. This meant that Sato was thus the instrumental soloist in the tenor aria “Mein Verlangen,” and with the rest of the ensemble completely in sync with him, he could truly do his own thing.

And then there was light

Shunske Sato in Naarden, October 31, 2019. Photo by Hans van der Woerd, courtesy of The Netherlands Bach Society.

And boy, did he do that! Every time he played the “Mein Verlangen” theme, he stretched the tempo just a little bit, every time slightly differently. It created a halo over the entire aria. Even though the tenor wasn’t singing yet, the text was already there: the longing (“Verlangen”) but also the pure radiance (“reiner Schein”) of the soul and the image of angels. He truly brought light into the music, and also for me personally into my heart and mind. It made all my frustrations and worries melt away, and it made the other instrumentalists play and tenor Thomas Hobbs sing with even more inspiration than they already had in this concert.

“The more I let go, the more I risk, the more I dare to really tell the story”

Witnessing Sato communicate the text of the aria before the singing started, I was immediately reminded of this wonderful interview with him for All of Bach. It is specifically about the “Erbarme dich” aria from the St. Matthew Passion, but his message “The more I let go and the more I risk, the more I dare to really tell the story…” applies just as well to this aria that I saw him play.

I went to the “All Souls” concert again three days later in the beautiful concert venue the Nieuwe Kerk has become. Sato’s playing there was possibly even more moving and the effect on those on stage and in the audience possibly stronger too. Several people had tears in their eyes.

Watch for yourself in this Advent aria

See the “Sato magic” happen in the soprano aria from Cantata 36 Schwingt freudig euch empor on All of Bach, with soprano Zsuzsi Tóth. Never did I enjoy a “da capo” this much. To read more about this cantata, the third one Bach wrote (or adapted) for the first Sunday of Advent, read my blog post from 2017 here.

With special thanks to Marloes Biermans and Annelie Bulsing of the Netherlands Bach Society for their generosity in providing photos and copy for me to use,

Wieneke Gorter, December 3, 2019.

To find the Weekly Cantata Advent Calendar, please click here.

Paintings, praises, and a possible prelude to the St. Matthew Passion

03 Saturday Feb 2018

Posted by cantatasonmymind in Bach's life, Cantatas, Chorale cantatas 1724/1725, Leipzig

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Alex Potter, Bruges Bach Academy, BWV 105, BWV 125, BWV 234, BWV 46, Candle Mass, cello, Collegium Vocale Gent, Dorothee Mields, Eglise St. Roch, floating aria, flute, Ingeborg Danz, oboe da caccia, organ, Peter Kooij, Philippe Herreweghe, Presentation at the Temple, Purification of Mary, strings, Thomas Hobbs

“Adoration of the Magi” triptych of Jan Floreins by Hans Memling, 1479. Memling Museum (Old St. John’s Hospital), Bruges, Belgium. The right-hand panel features “The Presentation at the Temple,” with the Temple really being the former St. Donaas church in Bruges.

If you are reading this in the email you received from WordPress, please click on the title of this post to enjoy the paintings and the formatting 🙂

This post is almost two days late, as it was for Friday February 2, the feast of the Purification of Mary, or Candle Mass, or Presentation at the Temple. If you have time, please read how this holiday was strongly connected to folk culture in my post from last year. In Lutheran reality, this was the day when Simeon’s song of praise Herr, nun lässest du deinen Diener in Friede fahren or Nunc Dimittis was celebrated. With his chorale Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin Luther turned Simeon’s song of praise into a message of “Now I can die in peace.” This is why all five cantatas (The famous Ich habe genug 82, 83, 125, 157, and 158) Bach wrote for this holiday are mostly about the joy of dying.

Since I’m following Bach’s chorale cantata writing in Leipzig in 1725, I’m featuring Cantata 125 Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin, written for February 2 of that year, and based on that same chorale by Luther.

My favorite overall recording of this cantata is Herreweghe’s recording from 1998, with Ingeborg Dantz, alto; Mark Padmore, tenor; and Peter Kooij, bass. You can find it here on YouTube. Please consider supporting the artists by purchasing the album on Amazon or on iTunes. It also includes the stunning Cantata 8 (Herreweghe’s personal favorite!) and the beautiful Cantata 138.

Please find the German text with English translations of this cantata here, and the score here.

There are some similarities with last week’s cantata, such as the bass solo that is made up of bits of recitative and bits of chorale melody, but already in the opening chorus a new day is dawning. If you read the history of today’s holiday in my post from last year, you know that Candle Mass was a natural time of year to start with something new.

Could the new inspiration in Bach’s brain be the St. Matthew Passion? It is not unlikely at all. Van Hengel suggests that the opening chorus has elements of the St. Matthew opening chorus, but then argues that that piece was not written yet in 1725. However, Gardiner (in his book Music in the Castle of Heaven) makes a strong case that Bach might have initially planned to have the St. Matthew Passion ready for Good Friday 1725. I’ve pointed out before that we can find preludes to the “Great Passion” in Bach’s cantatas as far back as the fall of 1723 (see posts about cantatas 105 and 46), so it is not unlikely that Bach was working on this in January 1725.

Keeping all this in mind, it is striking that the first aria after the opening chorus is an alto aria in St. Matthew style, full of pietism. Watch Alex Potter (keep reading to find out more about him) sing this aria with the J.S. Bach Foundation here on YouTube. The instrumentation resembles the “Aus Liebe” soprano aria from the St. Matthew Passion: there are no organ chords in the bass, only repeated cello notes, and for the rest it is just flute and oboe da caccia, an unusual combination.

Because of the many connections with this Cantata 125 I’m now going to sneak in a mini review of the Herreweghe/Collegium Vocale concerts I attended in Europe this past week.

Applause at the end of the concert in the Eglise St. Roch in Paris, January 30, 2018. From left to right in front row: Peter Kooij, Thomas Hobbs, Philippe Herreweghe, Alex Potter, Dorothee Mields. Photo by Aube Neau/Luc Barrière, published with permission.

Let’s take the alto aria from Cantata 125. I call this type of aria a “floating aria” because it has no real basso continuo: there is no melodic line in the cello or chords in the organ, i.e. no foundation for the singer to stand on. These floating arias are incredibly beautiful and the stuff of goose bumps, but also incredibly challenging for the vocal soloist. In the terrific concert in Paris on Tuesday January 30, soprano Dorothee Mields had two such arias: the “Qui tollis” from the Mass in A Major (BWV 234)* and the “Wir zittern und wanken” from Cantata 105. She did an absolutely marvelous job in both of them, but her singing was the most mesmerizing in the “Wir zittern und wanken” aria. Cantata 105 stood out during that Paris performance anyway in my humble opinion. It simply has the best opening chorus of all cantatas Collegium Vocale performed in the three concerts I attended. On top of that, the group (including soloists Thomas Hobbs and Peter Kooij) recorded this in 2012, and you could tell it was still in everyone’s bones and it was a pleasure to see Herreweghe direct the strings as well as the soloists. One of my favorite bass ariosos occurs in that cantata (it makes me think of the “Am Abend da es kühle war” from the St. Matthew) and Peter Kooij’s strong rendition almost made me cry.

Detail of right-hand wing of the “Adoration of the Magi” Jan Floreins triptych by Hans Memling, showing the Presentation at the Temple, or Mary presenting Jesus to Simeon

And then on to countertenor Alex Potter. It was in Bruges’ St. John’s Hospital museum that I saw the Memling painting featured in this post, and this is also where I ran into Alex Potter and was able to tell him how much I enjoyed his singing on Friday January 26. During the concert in Paris on January 30 his most impressive performance was the “Quoniam” aria from the Mass in A Major (BWV 234)**, which I heard in Bruges on Sunday January 28 and again in Paris on Tuesday January 30. He had a clear understanding of the text, made the music soar, and seemed to passionately enjoy what he was doing. It was a joy to watch and listen to.

Wieneke Gorter, February 3, 2018.

*originally from Cantata 179 from August 8, 1723.

**originally from Cantata 79 from October 31, 1725.

Blogging from Bruges

27 Saturday Jan 2018

Posted by cantatasonmymind in Cantatas, Chorale cantatas 1724/1725, Leipzig, Septuagesima

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Alex Potter, alto, cantatas, Dorothee Mields, Ignace Bossuyt, Paul Agnew, Peter Kooy, Phlippe Herreweghe, Septuagesima, soprano, Thomas Hobbs

Brugge

I had the privilege of shaking hands with Philippe Herreweghe around midnight on Friday. It was pure coincidence, or serendipity, if you will* and he has no idea who I am, but it was a magical end to an already exciting day at the Bach Academy in Bruges, Belgium.

On that Friday I attended an informative and inspiring lecture by Bach expert Ignace Bossuyt during the day (more about that in a different post), heard a fabulous Bach cantata concert by Collegium Vocale/Herreweghe in the evening, and got to witness a very entertaining interview with Herreweghe late at night. The concert featured Cantatas 186 and 146. It was a feast to see Herreweghe at work, focusing on phrasing and text expression. It was also very enjoyable to experience the rich, well-blended string sound in the orchestra, the terrific oboe playing, the signature sound of the sopranos and altos of Collegium Vocale, and the wonderful work by all four soloists. Bass Peter Kooij stood out for his excellent diction and exquisite tone, tenor Thomas Hobbs for his stage presence and clear voice, and countertenor Alex Potter for his marvelous job in the “Ich und Du” aria from Cantata 146. As always I consider it a blessing to see and hear Dorothee Mields sing. The combination of the sound of her voice and her pronunciation and understanding of the text is something very special and beautiful to behold. I feel lucky that I will get to hear this group of musicians two more times this week: today (Sunday) again in Bruges, and Tuesday in Paris.

Time to talk about the cantata for today now: Cantata 92 Ich hab in Gottes Herz und Sinn for Septuagesima Sunday (the third Sunday before Lent), first performed on Sunday January 28 in 1725. For this cantata, Bach had received an extremely long text from his librettist. We don’t know for sure who Bach’s librettist was at this time. Scholars believe it might have been Andreas Stübel, poet, theologian, and emeritus assistant principal of the St. Thomas School. If it was indeed Stübel, he would pass away on January 31, and might already have been ill around the time Bach was working on this Cantata 92. So while there normally might have been a discussion about the libretto between Bach and Stübel, this time Bach might have had to work with what he had.

The result is a creative but extremely long bass recitative (movement 2), and a rather long cantata in total: nine movements in all. Bach had created such lengthy cantatas at the start of his career in Leipzig, during the summer of 1723, but never before during this chorale cantata cycle of 1724/1725.

This Cantata 92 Ich hab in Gottes Herz und Sinn contains arguably the most operatic tenor aria Bach ever wrote, even crazier than the aria from Cantata 81, an equally dramatic bass aria, and an absolutely lovely soprano aria. But what moves me the most in this cantata is the alto chorale with oboe accompaniment (movement 4). It gives me the good kind of stomach ache every time I hear it. On most recordings this chorale gets sung by all choir altos, not just the alto soloist.

Because I appreciate the bass soloist expressing the drama in his recitative and aria as much as the tenor does in his, my favorite “overall” recording of this cantata is the one by Bach Collegium Japan. Find my playlist here on Spotify. With Yukari Nonoshita, soprano; Jan Kobow, tenor; and Dominik Wörner, bass.

A good alternative on YouTube is Koopman’s recording of this cantata. With Deborah York, soprano; Paul Agnew, tenor; and Klaus Mertens, bass. I always love to hear Paul Agnew in operatic arias like this one.

Please find the text of Cantata 92 here, and the score here. And please consider supporting the artists by purchasing the recording you like best:

Bach Collegium Japan recording of Cantata 92 on Amazon

Koopman recording of Cantata 92 on Amazon

Wieneke Gorter, January 28, 2018.

* A friend and I were sitting in the back of a tiny cafe when Herreweghe and his wife walked in. He went over to greet some fans in the front of the restaurant, then sat down to eat. While I was contemplating what I would say to them later, once I would be on my way out of the restaurant, Herreweghe got up to use the restroom and walked right by our table. My friend asked him if he would welcome even more compliments, and then we shook hands with him and told him how much we had enjoyed the concert. It didn’t feel like the right time to tell him about my blog, and I was too star struck to think of mentioning that I would be attending two of his other concerts this week.

The Herreweghe altos (Trinity 2 in 1724)

25 Sunday Jun 2017

Posted by cantatasonmymind in Cantatas, Chorale cantatas 1724/1725, Leipzig, Trinity

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Alex Potter, alto, Bach Collegium Japan, Collegium Vocale Gent, Eduard van Hengel, Phlippe Herreweghe

BWV2_title — The title page of cantata 2 Ach Gott tom Himmel sieh darein, written by Bach’s lead copyist, J.A. Kuhnau. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz

Regular readers of this blog know that I have a soft spot for the Herreweghe choir sopranos*. But the alto section of Collegium Vocale Gent is often equally impressive, and they deserve a special mention for their fabulous sound in the cantus firmus of this cantata’s opening chorus. Listen to Herreweghe’s recording of cantata 2 Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein on YouTube.

Find the text of this cantata here (read along so you can see the brilliant text-illustration in the music), and the score (where you can see which instruments double which vocal parts) here.

Bach wrote this cantata for the 2nd Sunday after Trinity, which fell on June 18 in 1724. As I explained last week, this is the second in a series of four cantatas at the start of Bach’s 1724/1725 Leipzig cycle, and according to the master’s orderly design for these first four chorale cantatas, the cantus firmus of the hymn tune (always the same as the cantata title) is now in the alto part.

This Herreweghe recording is from before the time that soloists joined the choir sections of Collegium Vocale, which means that alto soloist Ingeborg Danz does not sing in this excellent group of one mezzo (Mieke Wouters), two contraltos (Yvonne Fuchs and Cécile Pilorger), and one countertenor (Alex Potter). Also the blend with the instruments doubling this alto part (two oboes and one trombone) is so marvelous it gives me goose bumps. Then again, there aren’t many things in music that move me more than a Bach opening chorus with trombones.

Whenever Bach uses the archaic form of chorale motet as opening chorus, especially when he combines it with the use of the Renaissance/Early Baroque trombone quartet (1 cornetto and 3 trombones), he wants to stress the timeless importance, the authoritative character of a message. In this case the at that point already two centuries old message is the chorale, one of Luther’s own. For readers who understand German: Eduard van Hengel’s website (in Dutch) has a very insightful overview of the original German text of Psalm 12, the text of Luther’s chorale, and how Bach’s librettist changed that into the text for the cantata. You can find it here.

Bach alto and tenor arias are at their prettiest, I find, when they are written as a trio sonata, and there is a wonderful example of that in the alto aria Tilg, o Gott in this cantata. It is a plea for help in fighting the “Rottengeister,” or the sectarians amidst the Lutherans. Alto soloist Ingeborg Danz does a terrific job interpreting the text. When the alto starts singing the word Rottengeistern, we see that it was that word we had already heard many times in the triplets of the violin part. As Eduard van Hengel says, it is the “popular easy talk of the sectarians, and that is also the reason why the other two parts don’t have this motive” [to further illustrate the schism].

In his effort to educate his fellow Lutherans (the Leipzig congregations) with his music, Bach wants to make it clear that he’s still preaching by means of the well-known chorale, and uses longer notes for the direct quotation (in music and text) of the chorale in this aria: der uns will meistern.

The best interpretation of the tenor aria Durchs Feuer wird das Silber rein actually appears on another recording, that of Bach Collegium Japan with tenor Gerd Türk. You can listen to that aria here. Here we have arrived at the solution/salvation part of the cantata, and so this music is more pleasant, easier to listen to. But Bach is still preaching: there are some crossing (!) lines in the music, and in the middle section, which tells the listeners to be patient (sei geduldig) and Bach stresses the words Kreuz und Not.

So one wonders: was Bach’s decision to focus on chorales for this 1724/1725 cantata cycle inspired by his need to make things easier for the boy sopranos, or by a wish to explain the theology to the congregations in a way that was more obvious to them than the more complicated, sometimes perhaps too hidden, messages he had so far delivered by way of his music? Or had the City Council or the church elders told him to to this?

*Read more about that in this post.

Wieneke Gorter, June 25, 2017

First Sunday after Easter 1724

23 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by cantatasonmymind in After Easter, Bach's life, Cantatas, Leipzig

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Alex Potter, Bach, cantatas, corno da tirarsi, Jos van Veldhoven, Peter Kooy, Thomas Hobbs, tromba da tirarsi

caravaggio_-_the_incredulity_of_saint_thomas

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio, 1601-1602, Sanssouci Palace, Potsdam, Germany

In the past two weeks I ran out of time to work on this blog because of being sick, performing concerts with California Bach Society, and being on a trial jury for the first time since becoming a United States citizen in 2011. So this post for the First Sunday after Easter in 1724 is post-dated, and short, but contains lots of information to learn more about this beautiful cantata.

Previously in 1724: Bach “premiered” his Passion according to St. John on Good Friday, April 7, 1724. Then he ran out of time and energy and, without too much care for detail and text illustration, created cantatas out of existing music for Easter Monday and Easter Tuesday of that year.

This means that the first new composition he wrote after the St. John Passion was this cantata 67 Halt im Gedächtnis Jesum Christ (keep thinking of Jesus Christ), based on the Gospel text of Jesus appearing to his disciples. A famous cantata, already known and admired in the early 19th century, especially because of the dramatic fourth movement for choir and bass, which Bach would later transform into the Gloria of his Missa Brevis in A (BWV 234).

For the background of this cantata I will refer you to the experts, in this 15-minute video by the Netherlands Bach Society, published within their AllofBach series. The video is in Dutch, with English subtitles. It talks about Bach including a flute (not a recorder!) for the first time in a cantata, the meaning behind the text, and the use of the slide-trumpet “corno da tirarsi.”

Listen to and watch their performance here, find the text here, and find the score here. The Netherlands Bach Society, conducted by Jos van Veldhoven, with countertenor Alex Potter, tenor Thomas Hobbs, and bass Peter Kooij.

Wieneke Gorter, April 30, 2017.