Issue #59
Last Update September 23, 2008
Arts Tanglewood Presents Bach at its Best by Dave Sear July 25, 2007 On Wednesday July 25th 2007 the Netherlands Bach Society, conducted by Jos Van Veldhoven, was heard in a spectacular performance of J.S. Bach’s Mass in B minor, performed in an intimate and acoustically live setting in Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Lenox Massachusetts.
The Netherlands Bach Society specializes in performing baroque music as faithful to the style of the period as scholarship shows the way. In this case the ensemble appeared with a chorus of ten voices and five superb soloists. This reviewer can’t remember any other performance where all the vocal soloists were uniformly outstanding. With the combined voices of only fifteen singers, all the parts were clear, followable and flexible, which brought out the polyphonic nature of Bach’s music and how it so beautifully weaves together. The singers were enhanced by a small orchestra of consummate musicians playing period instruments, often one or two instruments on a voice, which further enhanced the polyphony and made all of Bach’s wonderful lines, whether between instrumental or sung, a joy to follow. The performers received a standing ovation, and the audience left Ozawa Hall with an experience that will be long remembered.
The following evening the Netherlands Bach Society returned to Ozawa Hall with two secular Bach cantatas and the Violin Concerto No 2 in E. The cantatas, while well performed with the same excellent musical forces as the night before, did not create the same level of musical experience: Bach, the master was writing about mere mortals and not about God.
With Johannes Leertouwer as violin soloist, the Bach Violin Concerto No. 2 in E was masterfully performed, with a smaller ensemble weaving together Bach’s beautiful polyphonic voices and leaving the audience with another rewarding musical experience. This reviewer first heard the work as a piano concerto, and it is interesting how Bach, himself a master of both keyboard and violin, borrowed his own works and presented them in different formats. Glen Gould has left us with a wonderful recording of this work. Bach probably wrote the piece for Leipzig's Collegium Musicum, a bunch of musicians who got together down at Zimmerman’s Coffee House mostly for fun. Oh, if we only had coffee house music of this caliber today. Hey Starbucks, looking for something new?
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