4 March 2008
Immanuel: The Perfect Setting For Bach Program
By JEFFREY JOHNSON | SPECIAL TO THE COURANT
March 4, 2008
Bach sounds right when heard in a church. Balances blend as they diffuse and reverberate in spaces designed for worship.
Concora (Connecticut Choral Artists) and the Hartford Symphony presented choral music by J. S. Bach on Sunday at Immanuel Congregational Church that allowed an excellent opportunity to hear this music in its natural environment.
The program opened with Bach’s motet “Komm, Jesu, komm” written for an eight-part double choir. Concora was arranged in two complete soprano-alto-tenor-bass groups facing one another with their artistic director, Richard Coffey, conducting.
This notoriously complex and difficult work was negotiated with skill and grace by the choir. The text came across clearly — no small feat in music with textures this knotted — and the performance was paced deliberately so that the stylistic change in the second stanza of the text resolved the energy built up to that point.
The first half closed with Bach’s Cantata No. 182, “Himmelskönig, sei willkommen.” For this work the chorus unified and filled in the space behind the orchestra. They were now facing the audience and the color of the sound shifted noticeably. The text of Cantata No. 182 outlines the story of Jesus entering Jerusalem, contrasting the welcome he received then with his execution less than a week later.
The music is organized around a central collection of personal responses and observations sung by a sequential array of soloists; first David Kennedy singing the bass aria “Starkes Lieben” followed by Pamela Frigo Johnson singing the mezzo soprano aria (”Leget euch dem Heiland unter”) and Ehren Brown, tenor soloist in the aria (”Jesu, lass durch Wohl und Weh”). Brown impressed with a laser clear sound and diverse vocal colorations that made for dramatic presentation. He seemed to feed off the energy coming from the extraordinary cello figuration and set the stage for the choral finale to this work.
After intermission we heard Bach’s Cantata No. 21, “Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis.” This work, the longest of all extant Bach cantatas, is focused on redemption.
There were several memorable moments in this performance.
Tenor Gabriel Löfvall’s recitative (a piece that is performed in a style between talking and singing) and aria made an impression with his rich colorful sound and an effortless ability to project. Quick figurations came across consistently pitch accurate and he transmitted a clear sense of larger phrase structure and design.
Christine Laird, soprano soloist, got some help from one of those intangibles of performance. Her solo, entwined with the oboe, began with a list of symptoms: Sighs, tears, anguish, distress.
She delivered each word with expressive vibrato and a controlled line that maintained energy throughout the “listing.” She was helped at the cadence by the sound of one of those nesting crows of Hartford that began to settle in the tree tops as dusk fell. The correspondence gave an extra chilling feel to the text and performance.
Conductor Coffey’s efforts were apparent throughout the event. Assembling forces this divergent is no simple matter. But beyond the practical he invested great energy in the music consistently, keeping the momentum building from movement to movement so that the overall messages and story lines were clear. Endurance becomes an issue in works this dense and extended, and Coffey supported both the ensemble and chorus. He is an obvious inspiration to the singers.
Of all the massive compositional output of Bach, the music that puts us most closely in touch with the activities of his daily life from his late 20s until his death is his canatas. To be involved in their production today is to enter into an understanding both personal and spiritual.
source: The Hartford Courant, March 4, 2008
Update (3/19/2008): I’ve removed the link to the Courant article. They seem to have removed the story from their search engine, and you can only get it now by paying $3.95 for an “archival” copy. Seems a bit shady to me, but such is life.
