Hall One, Kings Place
Mass in B minor, BWV 232
Malin Christensson (soprano)
Jennifer Johnston
(mezzo-soprano)
William Towers
(counter-tenor)
Joshua Ellicott (tenor)
Benedict Nelson (baritone)
Aurora Orchestra
Choir of Clare College, Cambridge (director of music: Graham Ross)
Nicholas Collon (conductor)
And so, Kings Place’s
year-long series, ‘Bach Unwrapped’, came to a close with one of the towering
masterpieces of Western civilisation, the B minor Mass. The St Matthew Passion may – somehow – be
greater still, at least for some of us, but choosing between them is akin to
choosing between Tristan and Parsifal. It was a salutary experience
to be reminded that this was the first performance of Bach’s mass I had
attended since starting to review. I am not sure that they are very thick on
the ground in any case, but for those of us not swayed by the claims of ‘authenticity’,
opportunities are few indeed. It is difficult not to feel at least a little
angry about the monopolisation of the repertoire by those whom Adorno described
as saying Bach but meaning Telemann. (The cynical marketing practices of the
recording industry are more guilty still.) We still have the great recordings
of the past, of course: those of musicians such as Klemperer, Jochum, Karl
Richter, and – albeit all too few in number – Furtwängler. Yet other musicians
have been frozen out, the late Sir Colin Davis having spoken with great regret
that the fulminations of ‘specialists’ had made it all but impossible for him
to conduct Bach any longer. (Imagine a B minor Mass from him!) Pierre Boulez foresaw
and experienced what would come to pass a good few years earlier, saying:
There are six performable [orchestral] works by Bach: the Brandenburg Concertos! And I’ve done them, the Brandenburgs, in my career as a conductor. But even as I was making my way forward, until about 1978, the specialists were simultaneously taking over. They were starting to say, ‘If they’re not played in the true baroque manner, with baroque instruments, it’s useless to play them any other way.’ Then one isn’t going to play them at all.
Boulez also conducted a fair
number of the cantatas, not that one would know from the airbrushed histories
of Bach performance one encounters. Now we are subjected to competitions for
the hairiest of hair shirts, the most meagre of forces (utterly disregarding
Bach’s own 1730 memorandum to the Leipzig city authorities), and so on, with
Bach’s music standing perilously close to the status Adorno also foretold of
becoming unperformable.
It was, then, a particular
joy to welcome a performance from the Aurora Orchestra under Nicholas Collon,
with soloists and the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge. Not that Collon’s
reading was untouched by ‘period’ influences; indeed, his tempi were often
decidedly upon the brisk side. More importantly, there was real musicianship here on display both
from singers and the ever-impressive orchestra, which appeared far more
concerned with performance, with communication, with the message of text and
music, than with bogus concerns of ‘correctness’. The Clare Choir’s
contribution stood pretty much beyond reproach. Of course, there remained
something of an ‘English’ sound, which perhaps is not quite the best of matches,
but there was more than enough compensation in the commitment and precision
heard here. Bach’s counterpoint was throughout both audible and meaningful.
There were times when greater weight might in principle have been desirable,
but given that the performance took place in a small hall, those occasions were
relatively few.
There was much to relish from
the vocal soloists too. Malin Christensson’s delivery of her soprano arias was
flawless, even when taken at breakneck speed the ‘Laudamus te’ being the only
case to my mind where the tempo moved from quick to absurd. (I felt equally for
the leader and solo violin, Alexandra Wood; requisite grace was simply not
possible when taken so quickly.) Jennifer Johnston proved a rich-toned mezzo:
most welcome indeed. I was a little puzzled as to why we had a counter-tenor as
well. To my ears, the voice sounds more appropriate to Handel than to Bach, but
that, I think, is simply a matter of taste; however, it was not clear why we
needed both. That said, William Towers did an excellent job, eminently flexible
and with considerably greater vibrato than many would have expected. Joshua
Ellicott was just as impressive, his account of the ‘Benedictus’ plangently moving,
whilst never confusing that plangency with the abrasive. Benedict Nelson was
somewhat dry of tone, but sang his arias with intelligence. (It is perhaps here
that an additional soloist would have been better employed, given the difference
in tessitura between the ‘Quoniam’ and ‘Et in Spiritum Santum.’)
Though the violins,
presumably acting upon instruction, were somewhat parsimonious with their
vibrato – a problem not experienced from the rich-toned violas and cellos – the
orchestra’s contribution was just as impressive. Woodwind and brass (for some
reason, a modern horn but natural trumpets) were excellent; I cannot recall a
single solo that did not impress. Both chamber organ and harpsichord were
employed as continuo instruments. Collon seemed for the most part quite happy
to let the music speak ‘for itself’, if, as I said before, somewhat quickly,
rather than making points about it. When more personal intervention was made,
it could sometimes be a little fussy – for instance, slightly laboured
articulation in the ‘Kyrie’ – but could also prove telling, as in the
cumulative power of the ‘Crucifixus’. It may not have been Klemperer, but it
had its own integrity.
Crucially, we were
never left in any doubt as to the stature of work – whatever the truth of its
assemblage – and composer. As Furtwängler once wrote in an essay upon Bach, ‘historians
sometimes wish to tell us that even a giant such as Bach, viewed in the context
of his age … loses the superhuman quality we attach to him.’ However, the
truth, as Furtwängler proceeded to argue, once again turned out to be quite the
reverse, for never is the ‘astonishing superiority of Bach’s music clearer …
than when one compares him with other composers of his time and environment,’
such as Vivaldi or Handel. If Furtwängler is perhaps a little harsh upon the
latter, one nevertheless knows what he means when he describes Handel’s
brilliance as seeming ‘strangely arbitrary, strangely capricious next to the
quiet, unerring organisation consistent throughout Bach’s musical thought’. Let
us be thankful that Bach is not yet quite lost to us.
