PHILHARMONIA CHAMBER PLAYERS: BAROQUE TREASURES March 14, 2014 - Wheeler Theater - 7:30 P.M

CENTRUM PRESENTS “CLASSICS IN CONTEXT” - 2013/14 CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES PHILHARMONIA CHAMBER PLAYERS: BAROQUE TREASURES March 14, 2014 - Wheeler Theater - 7:30 p.m. Centrum’s Baroque Treasures concert is generously sponsored by Leah Mitchell and Nancy McLachlan BAROQUE TREASURES: BACH, HANDEL & VIVALDI PHILHARMONIA CHAMBER PLAYERS Sherezade Panthaki, soprano / Stephen Schultz, flute / Marc Schachman, oboe Kati Kyme & Lisa Weiss, violins / Anthony Martin, viola / William Skeen, violoncello Hanneke van Proosdij, harpsichord Georg Phillip Telemann (1681-1767) Trio Sonata in E minor from Tafelmusik II Affetuoso - Allegro - Dolce - Vivace Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) Concerto for Flute Op. 10, No. 3 in D major, “Il Gardellino” Allegro - Cantabile - Allegro Benedetto Marcello (1686-1739) Concerto for Oboe in D minor Andante spiccato - Adagio - Presto George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) Trio Sonata Op. 5, No. 4 in G major Allegro - A tempo ordinario - Allegro non presto - Passacaille Gigue: Presto Menuet: Allegro moderato - INTERMISSION - Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068 Air Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) Cantata “O! angenehme Melodei!” BWV 210a Length of performance is approximately two hours. Latecomers will be seated during suitable intervals in the program. The use of cameras or recording devices of any kind is strictly prohibited. Please turn off your digital alarms or cellular telephones before the performance begins. At first glance the sequence of pieces in today’s chamber music program suggests a pleasing assortment, a chocolate box of Baroque favorites, offering a miscellany of familiar composers to sample. But there is a hidden ingredient linking the pieces you will hear, derived from the cosmopolitan nature of the musical styles of the early 18th century and how they were ab- sorbed and combined by the greatest musical confectioner of them all, J. S. Bach. Bach was an omnivore. Not for him to limit his taste to one cuisine— French, Italian, or German. In spite of this broad interest in foreign musical styles he was not a traveling man. True, as an ambitious 20 year old he had walked the 500 mile round-trip from Arnstadt to Lübeck to meet and hear the famous virtuoso Buxtehude. This adventure earned the young musician a rebuke from his employers for overstaying his leave. Sebastian spent his entire adult life in central Germany where his fore- bears had been career musicians for generations. He did visit nearby cities to evaluate organs, to see friends, and hear performances, but he made no visit to Italy like Handel’s, none to Paris like Telemann’s. A 120 mile trip, this time in a carriage, to Berlin near the end of his life was a big event, resulting in the Musical Offering to Frederick the Great. Bach was confined to Leipzig by his official duties as a performer, composer, and conductor, as well as domestic duties to his many offspring for whose education and welfare he was responsible. Regardless of what he might have wanted to do or where he might have wanted to go, getting any extended time off to travel was not possible. But travel in time was something that Bach did perhaps more than most Bach of his contemporaries. It helped him to connect with his family’s past that he came from a long line of practical musicians. It is said that in some parts of Thuringia in the late 17th century the word “Bach” was generic for musician because it was so com- mon for a Bach to be playing or writing music for the church or town festivities. Sebastian throughout his life collected and compiled an Albachisches Archiv (Archive of the Senior Bachs), including compositions by previous generations of his family. Such a regard for the music of the past is characteristic of his universal appetite for learning. The strength of his family ties certainly came to Sebastian’s aid when he was orphaned at an early age and consequently taken in by his elder brother Johann Christoph, a student of the renowned organist and composer Johann Pachelbel. There is an un- substantiated story that tells us much about Bach’s self-education. It is said that Johann Christoph had forbidden his little brother access to a certain manuscript of organ works that Sebastian wanted to see. Undeterred, he managed to extract it from its locked cabinet night after night and copy it by moonlight for his own use. This apocryphal story illustrates two aspects of how this young man became the monument that continues to incessantly impelled him, when he could not yet succeed by his own strength, impress us three centuries later—his determina- to seek aid from the models existing in his time. At first Vivaldi’s concertos af- tion to improve himself and, perhaps even more forded him this assistance…He studied the chain of the ideas, their relation important, the methods he used. to each other, the variations of the modulations, and many other particulars. The changes necessary in the ideas and passages composed for the violin, but The pilfering of the forbidden manuscript and not suitable to the keyboard, taught him to think musically.” that 500 mile walk—imagine the roads in the early 18th century and the weather in late autumn in In Vivaldi’s Il gardellino, a flute concerto published after Bach had made North Germany!—are evidence of an indomita- his keyboard transcriptions, we can hear clearly the first movement’s open- ble drive for self-improvement. But it is the copying material punctuating the solo instrument’s various bird calls and flirta- ing of the organ works (by hand! by moonlight!) tions with the violins in the open air. And true to form that music returns to that is key. In our lifetimes we have seen pen and bookend the movement. In keeping with the outdoorsy mood established ink give way to photocopying and scanning, and in the first movement, the second presents a pastoral serenade for the solo live performance now uneasily competes for our flute, accompanied by just the cello and harpsichord. Birds return in the attention with music experienced privately via last movement to remind us of the concerto’s nickname, “The Goldfinch”. electronic means. In previous times, music existed only in performance, heard either directly or privately while reading it or writing it down. The copying of music by hand is far more than a means to reproduce its notation. It is a way to study it, its construction, its flow of thought and argument, and its utilization of the instruments or voices it is writ- ten for. The music that Bach reportedly copied by moonlight was for his primary instrument, the organ. But Bach’s manuscript of Branbenburg Concerto No. 1 Bach was also a capable string player. According to his son Carl Philipp Emanuel, “he liked best Not just Vivaldi’s concertos were reworked by Bach. We are particularly for- to play the viola…in his youth, and until the ap- tunate that Bach also turned his attention to an oboe concerto by Ales- proach of old age, he played the violin cleanly sandro Marcello. The composer, ever respectful of the performer’s collab- and penetratingly.” According to his first biogra- orative share in the creation of an effective performance, wrote a simple pher, Johann Nicholas Forkel, “his ardent genius and rather plain slow movement as an opportunity for the oboist to show was attended by an equally ardent industry, which off his improvisatory abilities. However, even as a young man Bach was supremely confident that his own skills of invention could match any virtuoso’s. His elaboration for harpsichord of Marcello’s line The Baroque flute is made for the solo oboe is a demonstration of what might of wood, of which the most happen anytime Bach sat down at the keyboard. For- commonly used are box- tunately Bach’s ornaments can be readapted to the wood, ebony, and grena- oboe, so that we get to hear Bach as it were unseating dilla. It has a conical bore Marcello in the intricately wrought Adagio. that is wide at the end with the embouchure hole and That Bach could and did match his impromptu artist- tapers to become signifi- ry with other composers’ worked-out compositions is cantly more narrow at the attested to in this description from his son Carl Philipp bottom. Emanuel Bach: In musical parties where quartets or fuller pieces of in- strumental music were performed and he was not otherwise employed, he took pleasure in playing the viola. With this instrument, he was, as it were, in the middle of the harmony, whence he could best hear and enjoy it, on both sides. When an opportunity offered, in such parties, he sometimes also accompanied a trio or other pieces on harpsichord. If he was in a cheerful mood and knew that the composer of the piece, if he happened to be present, would not take it amiss, he used to make extempore, either out the figured bass a new trio, or of three single parts, a quartet. A propos quartets made from trios, we have a four part version of the Trio #4 from the set of 7 Trios, Op. 5 by George Frideric Handel. However, this is not a case of Bach adding a part to his distinguished contemporary’s composition. Although Bach was a great admirer of Handel’s music, the two men never met, even though they came within a few miles of each other on a couple of occa- sions. According to some partisan opinion in the 18th century Handel had pur- posefully avoided meeting Bach since he was perhaps his only worthy rival in organ playing.

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