Bach review: Bailey, Bodinger bring Bach’s Gamba sonatas to beautiful life
Though it did not show on the printed program, Tuesday’s concert in the Northwest Bach Festival 2017 series featured an important debut. The program promised a recital by the festival artistic director, cellist Zuill Bailey, and harpsichordist John Bodinger performing the three Sonatas for Viola da Gamba and Harpsichord by J.S. Bach (1685-1750), as well as two pieces of Bach’s music arranged for the cello.
As Bailey explained at the opening, however, we were going to hear a Zuill Bailey significantly different from the one we might have heard even a few months ago.
By his own telling, for the first 20 years or so of his career, Zuill Bailey approached the music of Bach, especially the Six Suites for Cello which form the cornerstone of the repertoire, as a “cello jock.” This is to say that, in playing those pieces, Bailey would exploit the full resources of the cello: its great dynamic range, its rich palette of colors, and compelling emotional power. In his mid-30s, however, he undertook a profound re-examination of his approach to that music, and spent much of the following 10 years in research and study. The result was a radical re-interpretation of the music, which has been captured in a celebrated recording and has opened a new world of musical experience for audiences in Spokane, and throughout the world.
While they share with the Cello Suites all the qualities that make Bach’s music treasurable, the Gamba Sonatas are very different. To begin with, they are not solo works, and the addition of the keyboard part is not incidental, but fundamental to the structure of Bach’s writing. Secondly, while the viola da gamba bears a physical resemblance to the cello, its musical qualities and capabilities are quite different. It has a far smaller dynamic range, especially in the bass, less sustaining power, and quite a different range of color. Furthermore, it is a fretted instrument, while the cello has no frets. While this makes it more challenging for the cellist to play in tune, it also allows him to execute slides and to vibrate the string in a way that imitates the human voice.
It is a risky business. Either the surging eloquence of the cello can overwhelm the keyboard part, or the voice of the cello can be choked back to an inarticulate whisper. Bailey, however, employed his mastery of his instrument to achieve a marvelously well-balanced dialogue with his partner, whose brilliant execution of Bach’s virtuosic writing was never eclipsed. When Bach split phrases between the two players, had one answer a question asked by the other, or invited us to follow a phrase as it ricocheted between them, there was never any sense of strain or sacrifice on either side.
From the standpoint of technique, Bailey accomplished this in several ways. He applied much less pressure to the bow, keeping it closer to the fingerboard than usual, which reduces the volume of a note and reduces its overtones. He also greatly reduced his normal deployment of slides and vibrato, which are devices better suited to music from the Romantic period.
No doubt, Bailey made many other technical changes, but more important was the utter humility with which this huge artistic personality placed himself at the service of the music. Bach wrote nothing more brilliant and full of life than this, and the audience was able to enter into it easily and completely, without having to climb over the egos of its interpreters.