Hall One, Kings Place
JC Bach – Symphony no.6 in G
minor, op.6 no.6
Mozart – Piano Concerto no.1 in
F major, KV 37CPE Bach – Symphony in D major, Wq 183/1 (H663)
JS Bach – Brandenburg Concerto no.1 in F major, BWV 1046
Mozart – Adagio and Fugue in C minor, KV 546
JS Bach – Brandenburg Concerto no.3 in G major, BWV 1048
With this very fine concert,
the Aurora Orchestra launched a five-year series, in which all of Mozart’s
piano concertos will be performed. I recall Pierre Boulez – a Mozartian to be
reckoned with, Don Giovanni being one
of the three operas he said he wished he had conducted, yet had not – suggesting
the concertos as a linking theme for an orchestra within a season, and he had
long previously begun a recorded version of that with his Domaine musical
orchestra and Yvonne Loriod, never, alas, proceeding further than the fourth.
(Do seek out the recording of the first four!) It is, one would have thought,
quite an obvious idea, and yet has rarely been pursued. Increasingly, audiences
– or at least the most reactionary elements within them, which, for some
reason, more often than not prove triumphant – seem to prefer second- or
third-rate scores which simply use large orchestras and sound rather like film
music; perhaps they always did. This, then, is an undertaking to be applauded
in principle; on the basis of this first instalment, it is certainly to be
applauded in practice too. The orchestra thinks this might be the first time a
single orchestra has done such a thing in a single venue; I know of no
predecessor and should be interested to hear if there has been one.
For this concert, John Butt
joined the orchestra as harpsichord soloist and director. I hope it will not be
the last such occasion, for the results made for a delightful and genuinely
thought-provoking concert. The title he came up with was ‘Bach is the father,
we are the children!’ It is, of course, a celebrated saying of Mozart’s, only
referring to Emanuel rather than Sebastian. And so, the first piano concerto
was framed by works from JC Bach, arguably the greatest compositional influence
upon the boy – and not only the boy – Mozart, and his elder brother, Emanuel. That
tragic, ultra-Bachian utterance, the C minor Adagio and Fugue, formed the
centrepiece of the second half, framed by two of the Brandenburg Concertos:
not, then, imputing direct influence, although there was certainly plenty of
that during the 1780s from other works by JS Bach, but rather setting up a
pleasing dialectical twist in which Mozart at some what take to be his most
severe – I can hear why, but I am not entirely in agreement – with Bach at his
sunniest, contrapuntal learning fundamental to both, yet undeniably more overt
in Mozart’s case.
Johann Christian Bach, the ‘London
Bach’, is buried just a few minutes’ walk away from Kings Place, in the
churchyard of St Pancras, in a genuine pauper’s grave. Here he sprang instantly
back to life, enriched by an excellent performance. The G minor Symphony, op.6
no.6 (not just op.6, as the programme had it), opened in alert, vigorous
fashion, its first movement vividly alert to the composer’s rhetorical
flourishes, without those substituting for phrasing, let alone a longer line.
(That happens far too often in ‘period’ performances of eighteenth-century
music: think of the often preposterous distortions of Nikolaus Harnoncourt, et al.) Sometimes, unreconstructed
modernist that I am, I might have preferred more vibrato from the strings, but
that was only a matter of degree, and is merely a personal observation.
Confounding of preconceived ideas was a welcome aspect, for JC Bach is often
thought of as amiable, ‘pre-Classical’, and so on; a work in which all three
movements are in the minor mode, and a performance pursued with such vigour did
the trick nicely. One heard, moreover, the importance of woodwind even in a
string-based work: clearly prophetic for Mozart. The slow movement was also
rhetorical in the best sense, poised between recitative and aria. This is
highly inventive music, and so it sounded. The finale sounded, again, quite
different in character, perhaps a little more ‘Baroque’ at its opening, yet
flowering into something arguably more ‘Classical’ thereafter, with many points
of contact with Mozart as symphonist in the 1770s. An astonishingly alert
performance from the Aurora Orchestra, directed by Butt with great wisdom,
lightly worn, concluded with a perfectly-judged throwaway ending.
The First Piano Concerto –
perhaps we should refer to it here as a Keyboard Concerto, but who cares? – was
performed on a French harpsichord rather than a German instrument; Butt assured
us that the sound was very close in any case. It was for me a splendid
opportunity to hear for the first time ‘in the flesh’ a work I have known for
many years, since first, as an undergraduate, acquiring Daniel Barenboim’s recording
of the complete concertos with the English Chamber Orchestra. (It is still, to
my mind, the greatest ‘set’; although in a number of works, certainly not all
of them, I might favour Barenboim’s later Berlin readings, he never re-recorded
the very earliest works.) The orchestral sound was very different (leaving
aside, of course, the solo instrument and its use as a continuo instrument).
The Aurora players, unsurprisingly, sounded a little ‘earlier’, although in no
way aggressively so, less sustained, perhaps less poignant, but full of
rhetorical life. Interestingly, the harpsichord sometimes sounded more
prominent as soloist than Barenboim’s piano, the orchestra tending, at least
some of the time, to play itself down during solo passages. Again, the
woodwind, connecting with the ‘London’ Bach performance, seemed prophetic of
the later Mozart. Whilst the outer movements are Mozart’s reworkings of popular
sonata movements by other composers – HF Raupach and Leontzi Honauer – it is
now thought by some scholars that the slow movement is entirely Mozart’s own.
(I might add: presumably with the help of a correction or two by Leopold.)
Perhaps what most interested me upon hearing it again, after quite a few years,
was that much of it, perhaps excepting the shift to the minor mode, sounded no
more ‘characteristic’ – nor, for that matter, no less ‘characteristic’ – than its
bedfellows; not that it was not delightful, of course. It was taken quite
swiftly, largely to good effect: arguably still more so when one imagined the
eleven-year-old himself performing it at the keyboard. The finale’s wonderful
catchiness was captured to great effect. Above all, the joy of these fine
musicians shone through. Butt’s own cadenza was harmonically quite adventurous,
as if to signal the beginning of a tonal journey Mozart would pursue throughout
this series of works.
CPE Bach’s D major Symphony, Wq
183/1, announced its show-stopping originality at the very outset. The arresting, even bizarre, nature of the
opening to the first movement – not just the tension of those repeated notes,
but the undeniably peculiar tessitura – was swiftly contrasted, one might
almost say neurotically, with woodwind balm, and so it would continue: not just
throughout the movement, but throughout the symphony as a whole. The shifts of
mood were brilliantly conceived and, so it seemed, relished. And somehow –
something often missing in performances of these works – there seemed a degree
of logic to the strange course followed. The increasing importance of the
woodwind, superbly played, seemed again to point to Mozart, whilst also marking
out Emanuel Bach as having a closer kinship to ‘French’ orchestral writing than
many might suspect. Melodic grace in the slow movement was underpinned,
paradoxically and uncomfortably, by unease beneath. If that sounds a little
weird, the weirdness is intentional. A vivacious account of the finale, albeit
with strange, compelling interruptions rounded off a fine performance.
The First Brandenburg Concerto
received a well-nigh ideal performance, small forces suited to the small hall.
(Not that I shall ever forsake Klemperer – nor, for that matter, the Busch
Chamber Players.) The tempo of the first movement, and pretty much everything
about it, simply sounded ‘right’. Balances and phrasing were such as to allow
Bach’s miraculous balance of counterpoint and harmony to do its work, belying
the complexity at work in the background. The Aurora players’ cultivation was
seemingly matched by their joy in Bach’s invention. What beguiling oboe playing
opened the second movement, answered in turn by violin, bassoon, and so on!
Again, there was an ineffable ‘rightness’ to what we heard. The following Allegro went with an insouciant swing,
although what learning lies behind it! It may be clichéd to say so, but ‘courtly’
was the first word that sprang to mind during the Menuet. And yes, swing
persisted, a ‘courtly swing’. The first Trio was equally delightful, pure
chamber music. Understated elegance characterised much of the Polacca, whilst
the second Trio proved straightforwardly life-affirming. This was a performance
that reminded me of why I first fell in love with these works, in the
recordings by the ECO and Philip Ledger.
It was in Mozart’s C minor
Adagio and Fugue – a favourite, far from incidentally, of Boulez – that I felt
myself a little out of sympathy with the performing decisions: not that they
were unjustifiable, and indeed in terms of that dialectical twist I mentioned
earlier, they had their own justification. It was only here really that I felt
the lack of a longer, more vocal line, ‘rhetoric’ perhaps coming too much to
the foreground. Balanced against that, the constructivism of Mozart’s writing
was laudably clear. It was very well played; I simply favour a more
Schoenbergian reading of this complex, fascinating work.
The Third Brandenburg Concerto
completed the programme. Its first movement was taken at a fast tempo, but
there was still plenty of space for the music to breathe, to live. Again, sheer
joy and musical delight pervaded the performance. In lieu of a small movement,
Butt and Thomas Gould (the orchestra’s leader) performed with elegance a
movement from the G major Violin Sonata, BWV 1019, ending on the right cadence.
There was splendid swagger to the finale, offering what seemed to be certainty
in accomplishment – perhaps, and if so, quite rightly, in performance as well
as in the work itself.
This concert will be broadcast
on BBC Radio 3 at 7.30 p.m., and available on iPlayer for thirty days
thereafter.
