Bach Festival's Brandenburg Concertos

Revolt of the soloists, or:
Free the Brandenburg Six

TOM PURDOM

In his opening remarks at the final Bach Festival concert, Jonathan Sternberg argued that the six Brandenburg Concertos aren’t concertos in the sense that Vivaldi’s best-known works are concertos. Sternberg noted that Bach called them sinfonias, and he suggested they’re really ensemble pieces with virtuoso parts for the musicians who visited Bach when he led a court orchestra.

Sternberg’s emphasis on the ensemble nature of the Brandenburgs had no effect on the program’s first item. The concertos were played in the order in which they were probably written, and the sixth Brandenburg is essentially a chamber music piece for a small string ensemble, played chamber-style without a conductor.

Bach didn’t include a solo part in the third Brandenburg, so Sternberg’s approach didn’t create any problems when he led that item (which, by happenstance, actually came third on the program). In his preface to the Third, Sternberg said he imagined Bach standing in front of a group of his friends passing the music around as if he were leading a basketball game. And that’s pretty much what happens. The center of interest darts around an orchestra composed of strings and harpsichord. Bach wrote a “concerto for orchestra” two centuries before Bartok invented the term.

The most effective way?

The program’s second piece, on the other hand, was Brandenburg One, with a very fine soloist, Hirono Oka, playing the extensive solo part. And there the difference between a concerto and an ensemble piece could be seen merely by noting the placement of the soloist.

In a true concerto, the orchestra accompanies the soloist. The soloist determines matters like the tempo and the general direction, and the conductor follows the soloist’s lead. The soloist normally stands closer to the audience than the conductor, on the conductor’s left. The conductor watches the soloist from the corner of his eye and they collaborate like equal partners. Sternberg, by contrast, placed his soloist in front of him, as if she were another member of the orchestra, and conducted her in the same way he conducted the other musicians.

That’s one way to perform the Brandenburgs. It may even be the authentic way. But I don’t think it’s the most effective way.

Hirono Oka is an accomplished soloist who was one of the stars of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia in the days when that group was called the Concerto Soloists and the musicians took turns playing solos. She’s been a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra for several years, but she still scores when she solos with local organizations like Karl Middleman’s Classical Symphony and Mimi Stillman’s Dolce Suono series. I’m always happy to hear good musicians play the Brandenburgs, but Brandenburg One would have sounded a lot livelier if she had worked with the freedom that soloists normally enjoy.

When he wrote program notes for the Philadelphia Orchestra, Bernard Jacobson liked to observe that one of the main attractions of the concerto is the conflict between the individual and the crowd. In this case, there was a definite conflict between the conductor’s vision and the quality of the featured soloists. The other soloists on the program all play in the same league as Hirono Oka, and one of them, the flutist Mimi Stillman, would probably be jetting from continent to continent, soloing with all the major orchestras, if she played an instrument with a big-orchestra repertoire.

The formidable foursome rebels

The second half opener confronted Sternberg with the quartet for flute, violin, oboe and trumpet spotlighted in the second Brandenburg. I won’t say the concerto initiated a rebellion by the formidable foursome gathered around the conductor, but I think they grabbed some extra freedom. The featured players all created looser, more spirited music during the entire second half.

The second Brandenburg opens with a wonderful Bachian jumble for the four lead instruments, and they launched into it with all the élan it requires. They maintained the pressure through all three movements, with the youngest member of the quartet, trumpeter Rachel Serber, contributing some particularly brilliant flights.

The next course on the menu, the fourth Brandenburg, featured Stillman as one of the two flutists and Oka in the hypnotic violin solo. It sounded, as it should, like one of the greatest expressions of exuberant joie de vivre ever created.

A pianist masters the harpsichord

The fifth ended the program with a showcase for Stillman, Oka, and harpsichordist Charles Abramovic. In the long unaccompanied solo near the end of the first movement, Abramovic proved he can play the harpsichord as well as he plays his customary instrument, the piano. In the unaccompanied trio in the slow movement, Abramovic and his two colleagues produced a short essay in the art of expressive playing.

None of their efforts would have meant anything, of course, if the lead players hadn’t interacted with a good orchestra. The six Brandenburgs can be heard, one after the other, without any mutterings about déja vu, because a creative genius made full use of all the opportunities for contrast and variety inherent in a form that bounces between different centers of interest. The program billed the orchestra as “musicians from the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia,” and veteran Baroque enthusiasts would have recognized musicians like violinists Igor Szwec and Mei-Chen Liao Barnes, who’ve frequently proved they can play the solo roles, too.



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