Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia

MENDELSSOHN CLUB OF PHILADELPHIA Alan Harler | Artistic Director Sunday | February 8, 2015 A NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE PHOTOS BY MARK GAMBOL After more than forty years as a “conductor and over a quarter century with Mendelssohn Club, I am honored and humbled to bring this glorious score to Philadelphia for its North American premiere. –AlAn HArler , A rtistic Dir”ector introDuction t is not oen that a single concert changes the musical landscape, but it can be said Iwith some justification that Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s landmark presentation of Bach’s monumental St. Matthew Passion on March 11, 1829 did exactly that. e concert had generated intense anticipation and was so enthusiastically received that it had to be repeated twice. Mendelssohn was in a unique position to bring Bach’s sacred masterpiece to life. ree generations of his family had studied Bach, played Bach, collected Bach manuscripts and featured performances of Bach at the musical salons they hosted. Mendelssohn’s own teacher carl Friedrich Zelter revered Bach, and made sure his students were thoroughly grounded in harmonic structure, counterpoint, figured bass and chorale writing. Mendelssohn was not the first to present Bach’s sacred music. Zelter frequently rehearsed Bach with his Sing-Akademie zu Berlin and had given private performances of the St. John Passion and parts of the B-minor Mass, and Gaspare spontini, director of the Berlin Hofoper, had presented the credo from the B-minor Mass at a concert in 1828. But none of these performances fired the public imagination or generated the lasting interest that Mendelssohn’s St. Matthew Passion did. it was due to Mendelssohn’s meticulous preparation, superb musicianship and unique artistic vision that he was able to present Bach, not as a “dry mathematician,” but as a composer of music of profound beauty, deep spirituality, and great drama. e musical landscape would never be the same again. – Michael Moore 1 Artistic statement hen we listen to the music of Johann sebastian Bach, we sense his For the past five decades, i have longed to conduct Bach’s St. Matthew Wdeep concern for humanity and his desire that we hold ourselves to the Passion having conducted the st. John Passion and Mass in B Minor highest values. After almost three centuries, audiences all over the world numerous times. Yet, in my long career of teaching and conducting, the still respond strongly to Bach’s humanism and compassion. Working so timing just never aligned with the resources required. A symphonic closely with Bach specialist Koji otsuki reinforced the idea that Felix chorus as large as Mendelssohn club never seemed appropriate to this Mendelssohn also revered Bach’s genius. i decided to travel to oxford work because of the intimate size of the group required in Bach’s original university myself to examine Mendelssohn’s own copy of Bach’s score. the score poses other challenges for a chorus of any size including St. Matthew Passion . the delicate and quite difficult coloratura passages and the Baroque period practices related to instrumentation, vocal affect, etc. All that Although i have been involved in over fifty commissions with changed, however, three years ago, when i heard christoph spering’s Mendelssohn club, i have never experienced such intimacy with a performance of Mendelssohn’s version. Here at last was a St. Matthew contemporary score. studying Mendelssohn’s own handwriting on his Passion that was compatible with the 140 voices of Mendelssohn club score was like inspecting the brushstrokes of a master painter. Did he of Philadelphia. choose pencil rather than in ink because of an underlying uncertainly about changes or was he simply being careful not to destroy the original? this project begs us to examine our founding and our role in Do erased sections reveal that he was struggling with a given passage or Philadelphia’s cultural history and to ask “Are we still relevant?” the phrase? Mendelssohn handled his rare copy with great care, tenderly laying answer is “yes” and this project is a perfect example as to why. our paper over the parts he “cut” so that the original would never be damaged. St. Matthew Passion offers the community many different opportunities to come together and to experience the music—by singing together, by My time in the Bodleian library at oxford provided me with a deeper watching videos of our process, by learning more about both Bach and understanding of what Mendelssohn wanted to achieve with his version of Mendelssohn, and by being swept away by the sheer drama of the the St. Matthew Passion . i now have a more profound appreciation of his Passion and the world-class soloists singing it. Mendelssohn club respect for Bach as a master composer with so much to teach all who chorus is providing a way to experience choral singing, classical music’s came after him. in many ways, Mendelssohn considered himself a student most accessible form, at both the micro and the macro levels, in both of Bach. over a century later, my teacher and mentor, the brilliant Julius passive and participatory ways. Herford, shared his own very deep connection to Bach the composer, and to Bach the man, with me and with all his students—including leonard After more than forty years as a conductor and over a quarter century Bernstein, Margaret Hillis, and robert shaw, among others. As a young with Mendelssohn club, i am honored and humbled to bring this faculty member at indiana university and the Aspen choral institute, glorious score to Philadelphia for its north American premiere. i am i was struck by Herford's reverence for the Bach master—especially genuinely excited to be advised by Maestro Masaaki suzuki, one the considering the historical context of the St. Matthew Passion and world’s foremost specialists and conductors of Bach. All of us are eager Herford's experience as a Jewish man who had to flee nazi Germany. to replicate Felix Mendelssohn’s specific directions by performing this 2 work outside of liturgical practice and by using operatic voices for the Artistic Director Alan Harler joined soloists. obviously, presenting this version of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia provides our chorus with an historic opportunity to speak about our in 1988, and also served for three own founding in 1874. Finally, i am especially proud that our research decades as Laura H. Carnell and public performance will bring new awareness of this important Professor and Chairman of Choral score to audiences and choruses across the world. Music at Temple University’s Boyer College of Music. He has appeared – Alan Harler at the Festival Casals in San Juan Artistic Director, Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia and the Aspen Choral Institute; has conducted master classes and PHOTO BY SHARON TORELLO performances in Taiwan, China and South Africa; and has prepared choruses for the world’s leading conductors. In 2007, Harler received the American choral Directors’ Association elaine Brown Award for lifelong service to choral Music. In 2009, he was honored with Chorus America’s Michael Korn Founder’s Award for Development of the Professional choral Art. Although I have been involved in “ over fifty commissions with Mendelssohn Club, I have never experienced such intimacy with a contemporary score. ” 3 HistorY he music of J.s. Bach represents the planet earth and the human Mendelssohn did his job extremely well to re-introduce this masterwork Tcivilization—not only figuratively but also literally. Aboard the Voyager to the public of the early romanticism. not only his strong musicianship spacecrafts launched by nAsA in 1977 are the golden records that but also his charisma and personality must have helped in leading the contain three tracks of Bach, along with two tracks of Beethoven and amateur chorus groups just like Mendelssohn club in his Bach performances . one track each of Mozart and stravinsky. We humans think Bach is one Perhaps Mendelssohn recognized in this profound church music Bach’s of the greatest composers ever lived on this planet, and we are very universality—and he tried to expose it to his public as directly as proud to present his works to possible intelligent life forms from other possible in his own way. planetary systems. the St. Matthew Passion is arguably the most powerful and prominent work by the master composer; how could we the golden records on the Voyager probes are the evidence that we not feel privileged, excited and humbled to take on this masterwork? recognize Bach’s universality today. it seems that we are still following Mendelssohn’s footsteps in that respect. then backtracking the footsteps of course it needs to be mentioned that the version we have taken on to see how Mendelssohn cut his way would be just the thing for us to do to is by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy from his 1841 performance in fathom his contributions in music history, and consequently, to get closer leipzig. When Mendelssohn conducted the St. Matthew Passion in the to Bach, arguably the greatest composer who ever lived on this planet. thomaskirche on April 4 (Palm sunday), it was the first time the piece was heard there in leipzig after Bach’s lifetime—91 years had passed – Koji Otsuki since he died there in his thomasschule apartment in 1750. Bach specialist Mendelssohn’s historic revival performance of the work in 1829 Berlin was a huge success, but it owes its success partially to his alterations of the work. He cut about a third of the original version; what was omitted were mostly choräle and arias with minimal instrumentation. the result Koji Otsuki is a versatile conductor and was that its introspective and meditative character subsided, but instead, performer specializing in the music of the profession of God’s providence through the biblical narrative of the J.S.

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