Bach’s range brought vividly to life
The 28th annual Northwest Bach Festival continued this week with two concerts that provided excellent Bach performances and insights into the Bach era, with some surprises by his contemporaries and predecessors.
Those who imagine Bach’s music to be essays in music’s ingenious mechanics were doubtless surprised Tuesday by the engaging warmth that violinist Tracy Dunlop and harpsichordist Mark Kroll brought to Bach’s “Sonata in A major for Violin and Harpsichord” (BWV 1015). The two brought freshness and vigor to the sonata’s fast movements. Even more striking, though, was the tenderness with which Dunlop’s violin floated over the soft staccato of Kroll’s harpsichord in the work’s Andante.
On the same program was viola da gambist Margriet Tindemans’ adaptation of Bach’s “Partita in E minor for Solo Flute” (BWV 1013). The silvery lightness of the viola da gamba’s sound proved ideal for the Partita’s four movements. Though the movements have the names of baroque dances, they seem to be more meditations on dancing rather than showing the physical act of movement.
But Friday, Tindemans and Kroll demonstrated just how physical baroque dances can be. Their performance of Friday’s concert finale, Georg Philipp Telemann’s “Sonata in A minor,” a showy exhibition of spins and leaps, had the same exuberant energy as the film “Strictly Ballroom.”
Tuesday, Kroll played what is probably the earliest surviving large-scale work by Bach, the infrequently performed, six-movement “Capriccio on the Departure of a Beloved Brother” (BWV 992). Kroll showed the teenage Bach capable of pathos in the work’s lament and humor in its final fugue, a fugue teasingly based on the call of the horn from the carriage on which the beloved brother departs.
Casual listeners often think of the harpsichord as inexpressive. But throughout these Bach Festival performances, Kroll has shown otherwise. Most impressive was his performance Friday of four sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti. Their emotional range was surprising – pungent dissonances biting as a flamenco guitar, startling pauses that would have brought a smile to Haydn or Beethoven, and the bustling energy in unremitting showers of fast notes. And these were only a few items in Scarlatti’s expressive vocabulary that Kroll’s performances explored.
Cellist John Marshall gave festival audiences a tour through the growth of cello playing, easily navigating the awkward leaps of Benedetto Marcello’s “Sonata in G minor” Tuesday and giving continuity to the patchwork design of Domenico Gabrielli’s “Three Ricerare” on Friday. But greater by far was Marshall’s deeply engaged performance of Bach’s “Fifth Cello Suite.” All six of these suites summarize the cello techniques of Bach’s time yet show how a single melodic line can serve up great expressive richness. I will cite only examples: the longing tension as adjacent notes collide in the Sarabande contrasted with the joyous glee in the skips and string crossings in the Allegro of the opening Prelude.
The audiences for the first two Bach Festival performances were considerably less than capacity. So it was a pleasure for both audience and performers to be present in a standing-room-only crowd for Friday’s performance in the Davenport Hotel’s Elizabethan Room. The performances at all three concerts deserved no less.