NOVEMBER 14 Bach & Sons: Café Photography: Amitava Sarkar
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NOVEMBER 14 Bach & Sons: Café Photography: Amitava Sarkar Sarah Mesko mezzo-soprano Mark Diamond Lauren Snouffer baritone soprano BACH & SONS: AT THE CAFE FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2014, 7:30 PM ZILKHA HALL • HOBBY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Welcome to Bach & Sons: At the Café, the frst of two programs Ars Lyrica devotes this season to the remarkable legacy of the Bach family. In addition to Sebastian Bach’s miniature comic masterpiece, the beloved “Coffee Cantata,” tonight’s program pays homage to his second son especially, Carl Philipp Emanuel, whose 300th birthday the world observes during 2014. From Emanuel Bach’s prolifc pen we’re delighted to be able to share both a concerto and a seminal texted work, the result of his warm friendship with one of the era’s leading poets. Though the music of Johann Sebastian is better known today, for much of the 18th century Philipp Emanuel was considered the more important fgure. As a leading Hamburg newspaper noted in a 1788 obituary: “His compositions are masterpieces and will endure superbly, when the jumble of modern Klingklang is long since forgotten.” How profoundly this family’s fortunes would change over the years! Our next Zilkha Hall program takes us south of the border, for ¡Felices Fiestas! on December 31 at the special time of 9 pm. Ars Lyrica’s New Year’s Eve gala expands this year to include both a pre-concert dinner at 8 pm and a champagne and dessert reception following the program, along with our annual silent auction and special gala entertainment. Get your tickets now for this festive event, which is always our most popular program of the year (last year’s program sold out). Three-concert subscriptions are also still available either by phone, online, or at the Hobby Center ticket windows this evening. Full details on the season can be found in our 2014/15 brochures, available at the table in the Zilkha Hall Lobby, or at www.arslyricahouston. org. Thank you for your continued support and enjoy the program! Matthew Dirst, Ars Lyrica Artistic Director 2 PROGRAM Flute Concerto in G Major, Wq 169 Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach (1714-1788) Allegro di molto Largo Presto Colin St Martin, traverso Die Amerikanerin: ein lyrisches Gemählde Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach (See page 6 for text) (1732-1795) Text: Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg (1737-1823) Sarah Mesko, mezzo-soprano INTERMISSION Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht, BWV 211 Johann Sebastian Bach (“Coffee Cantata” with English surtitles) (1685-1750) Text: Christian Friedrich Heinrici, a.k.a. “Picander” (1700-1764) CAST (in order of appearance): Zachary Averyt, tenor Mark Diamond – Schlendrian Lauren Snouffer – Lieschen Klopstocks Morgengesang am Schöpfungsfeste, Wq 239 C. P. E. Bach (See page 7 for text) Text: Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724-1803) Lauren Snouffer, soprano Sarah Mesko, mezzo-soprano Zachary Averyt, tenor Mark Diamond, baritone 3 PROGRAM NOTES C. P. E. Bach’s Concerto in G Major was frst heard on the organ in 1755, at the inaugural of Princess Anna Amalia’s new instrument in the Berlin City Palace. Bach himself later transcribed it for fute, very likely for use at daily concerts at the court of Frederick the Great, whose insatiable appetite for fute music kept Emanuel Bach and his Berlin colleague Johann Joachim Quantz, Frederick’s favorite composer and fute teacher, busy for many years. That this work re- mained a part of Bach’s concert repertoire, even after his move to Hamburg, is suggested by the survival of several later cadenzas by the composer for each of its three movements. It is a substantial piece, with an extended frst movement that contrasts dramatic opening gestures and unison tutti with delicate fligree for the soloist, a wonderfully tragic slow movement, and a light-hearted, even rustic, fnal movement full of brilliance and good humor. A member of Emanuel Bach’s literary circle, Heinrich Wilhelm von Ger- stenberg, penned the text of Die Amerikanerin, whose musical setting by Philipp Emanuel’s younger brother Johann Christoph Friedrich fed the growing fascination with American culture in the late 18th century. J. C. F. Bach spent nearly ffty years at the at the court of Count Wilhelm of Schaumburg-Lippe at Bückeburg, whose success in the Seven Years’ War brought both prestige and increased cultural activity, at least for a time, to an otherwise provincial court. Solo cantatas set to lyrics by leading po- ets were de rigueur, and having married a singer who was the daugh- ter of a court colleague, J. C. F. Bach was only too happy to oblige with several “monodramas” that are among his most imaginative creations. Die Amerikanerin: ein lyrisches Gemählde is, as its subtitle suggests, a lyric depiction of a characteristically 18th-century transformation. Waiting endlessly for his beloved, the poet/singer allows his love for Saide (whose charms are lifted straight out of the Song of Solomon) to become an un- healthy obsession, in which he imagines her imperiled by nature’s darker side: tigers, serpents, and various unnamed monsters. The work’s own transformation—its original 1773 title, Song of a Moor, was switched in 1776 to The American Girl, perhaps in honor of the American Revolution—neat- ly summarizes European fascination with the latest cultural “other”: native Americans. The cantata’s moral, that even the most painful hallucinations are good for the soul, sits somewhere between the sentimental and the operatic. At least one early source for Sebastian Bach’s “Coffee Cantata” car- ries the subtitle Dramma per Musica, an unlikely designation perhaps for Bach, who never wrote an opera, but one that suggests that this piece was 4 intended to entertain—unlike his church cantatas, which served to instruct and edify the faithful—and perhaps that it was meant to be acted out. Writ- ten for performance by the Leipzig Collegium Musicum (which Bach led) in Zimmerman’s Coffee House, the work dates from the early 1730s, when the coffee craze was at its height. Long satirized as the cause of exot- ic disease, moral ruin, even death, coffee was actually a very popular (if strictly regulated) drink in many cities in the early 18th century: the Leipzig town council began licensing—and taxing—coffee houses in the 1690s. Picander’s libretto for the work, though full of platitudes (one aria asserts that coffee tastes “sweeter than a thousand kisses, milder than musca- tel wine”), rehearses the timeless story of a grumpy old man (Schlendrian, which in German means a “stick in the mud” kind of guy) whose daughter (Lieschen), having discovered a forbidden pleasure, refuses to give it up until her father threatens to prevent any prospect of marriage. Bach’s mu- sic veers from an enraged patter song to ornate, spun-out Baroque trac- ery—ironically, for some over-the-top hyperbole in praise of coffee—and fnally to swinging melodies straight out of comic opera. Tonight’s staging updates the venue a bit, replacing one coffee-obsessed era with another (our own) while attempting to recreate some of the hearty Gemütlichkeit Bach and his friends must have enjoyed at Herr Zimmerman’s establishment. In 1782 Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, a leading poet of the German Enlight- enment, penned an ode entitled Morgengesang am Schöpfungfeste (“Morn- ing Song on the Feast of Creation”) for C. P. E. Bach to set to music. Their fortuitous collaboration did not go unnoticed: a review of its inaugural per- formance in 1783 noted that the work is “full of sublime simplicity…seldom have poetry and music been more fortunately united.” And indeed, Bach’s music makes the most of Klopstock’s vivid imagery: in the opening mea- sures, for example, where the sun’s absence is keenly depicted with a lowing melodic fgure begun in the bottom register of the accompanying strings. The Sun’s eventual appearance is celebrated not merely for its salubrious effect on the natural world and humankind; an explicitly Christian message is also woven into Klopstock’s ode. Unresolved tension between these two poles— traditional Christian doctrine vs. the Enlightenment—animates the last sev- eral sections of this ambitious work scored for four voices, fute, and strings. © Matthew Dirst 5 TEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS Die Amerikanerin The American Girl Text: Johann von Gerstenberg Translation: Matthew Dirst Andante Saide, komm! Mein Wunsch, mein Lied! Saide, come, my desire, my song! Saide, komm! Der Tag entfieht! Saide, come! The day slips away! Wo ist sie? Sie! Mein Wunsch, mein Lied! Where is she, my desire, my song? Wo ist mein Wunsch und Lied? Where is my desire and song? Wie kommts, daß die verzieht? Why has she disappeared? Andantino grazioso Schön ist mein Mädchen! Fair is my maiden, Schön wie die Traube, fair as a cluster of grapes die durch die Blätter der Laube which, gleaming through the leafy arbor, süßen Mosts beladen gläntz! is laden with sweet juice! Süß ist ihr Mund, wie die Blume, Her mouth is as sweet as the fower die mein Mädchen umkränzt! that crowns her brow! Saide, komm… Saide, come… Recitativo: Poco Allegro Du Quell, der sich durch Goldsand O stream, which winds through the golden schlängelt, sand, rausch mirs herüber, wo sie ist! tell me where she is! Du rauschend Laub in Cederwäldern, Rustling foliage in the cedar forests, sag mir es, wo mein Mädchen ist? tell me, where is my maiden? Ich harre, fühlloß, daß der Sand I wait, ignoring the sand die Fersen mir verzehrt that traps my heels, und meine Seufzer wecken die Tiger and my sighs wake this dieses Hains, grove’s tiger, die shon von Durst entbrannt, who already burns with thirst, weh mir, mein Blut von ferne lecken.