Clare/Aurora/Collon - Bach, Mass in B minor, 21 December 2013

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.

 

Aurora Orchestra/Collon - Bach, St John Passion, 16 March 2013

Hall One, Kings Place

 

Evangelist: John Mark Ainsley
Christus: Roland Wood

Malin Christensson (soprano)

Iestyn Davies (alto)
Andrew Tortise (tenor)
David Stout (Pilate/bass)

Choir of Clare College, Cambridge

Aurora Orchestra

Nicholas Collon (conductor)

 

 

I hope readers will forgive me if I make this review relatively brief, the reason being that events outside the control of the performers, or indeed the hall, made it rather difficult to come to a conventional judgement concerning the performance. A good part of the second part fell under the shadow of an audience member apparently losing consciousness, collapsing, and receiving medical treatment, most of that going on, immediately next to my seat, whilst the performance continued. I mention that not to over-dramatise, and certainly not in any sense to complain, my thoughts being very much with the man concerned, but simply to explain why inevitably, I am not in the best position to go into great detail.

 

This was the first time I had heard the Aurora Orchestra in Baroque repertoire, though I have had quite a bit of Mozart from them and from Nicholas Collon. The swift tempo for the great opening chorus had me worried, as did the relative reticence of the strings, but my fears were confounded; tempi were, at least by present-day standards, remarkably unobjectionable, and more than that well-chosen. Nor was there for the most part a lack of flexibility such as one all too often hears now in this repertoire. The orchestra was very small (strings 4.4.3.2.1) – though doubtless the ayatollahs of one-to-a-part ‘authenticity’ would dissent – but Hall One at Kings Place is not a large space, and for the most part, it was only in making mental comparisons with great recorded performances such as those by Gunther Ramin, Eugen Jochum, and Richter that one keenly felt the loss. Likewise, though warmer string tone would at times have been desirable, there was commendably little of the hair-shirt to the performance. I am having to rely on the evidence of my ears, but it sounded to me as though some at least, perhaps all, of the violins were employing gut strings. Vibrato was mercifully not absent – a noteworthy feature in our Alice in Wonderland world of Bach performance. The woodwind were especially fine, every obbligato solo assumed with excellence of technique and feeling. Oliver Coates’s cello stood out from the continuo group and indeed as a superlative obbligato instrument.

 

The Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, offered fine performances, by turn angry and devotional, as text and role required. The turba choruses were vivid, the chorales heartfelt but clear-eyed. Diction, moreover, was thoroughly excellent. The tiny part of the Maid, taken by one of the choir members, was unfortunate in intonation, but otherwise there was little about which anyone might reasonably complain. John Mark Ainsley occasionally took his Evangelist to the limit of what might be desirably in terms of hectoring, but there was no doubting his commitment and understanding and, so long as one did not insist upon the mellifluous tones of an Ernst Haefliger, much by which to be moved. Roland Wood’s Christus was less individual, but well delivered, and that may indeed have been the point. He is not, after all, a ‘character’ in the conventional sense. All of the other soloists shone, Malin Christensson striking a fine balance between an almost operatic beauty of tone and attention to the text, likewise Iestyn Davies, the ‘operatic’ quality of whose outburst in the extraordinary ‘Es ist vollbracht!’ could hardly have been more arresting. (If I still find a counter-tenor more apt for Handel than Bach, still preferring the warmth of a mezzo or contralto, then that is arguably just a personal matter.) Andrew Tortise offered plangency and, again, detailed attention to the text, whilst David Stout’s baritone suggested a consolation consonant with that offered by the Aurora woodwind.    

 

That, then, is indicative of my experience, compromised though it was by events. It certainly augurs well for a December Aurora/Clare Mass in B minor. I wish, however, that the Kings Place website had not described the work as ‘Bach’s iconic St John Passion’. It is surely now time that that much-abused word be proscribed until further notice, if only so that it might regain a little meaning.