THE ENGLISH CONCE∏T 1 CONCERT PROGRAMME JS Bach - In Search of Perfection 2019 – 2020 London Season Tuesday 25 February 7.30pm Wigmore Hall, London 2 3 WELCOME PROGRAMME Wigmore Hall, More than any composer in history, Bach The English Concert 36 Wigmore Street, Orchestral Suite No 4 in D Johann Sebastian Bach is renowned Laurence Cummings London, W1U 2BP BWV 1069 Director: John Gilhooly for having frequently returned to his Guest Director / The Wigmore Hall Trust own music. Repurposing and revising it Bach Harpsichord Registered Charity for new performance contexts, he was Sinfonia to Cantata 35: No. 1024838. Lisa Beznosiuk Geist und Seele wird verwirret www.wigmore-hall.org.uk apparently unable to help himself from Flute Disabled Access making changes and refinements at Bach and Facilities Tabea Debus Brandenburg Concerto No 5 in D every level. Recorder BWV 1050 Tom Foster In this programme, we explore six of Wigmore Hall is a no-smoking INTERVAL Organ venue. No recording or photographic Bach’s most fascinating works — some equipment may be taken into the Sarah Humphrys auditorium, nor used in any other part well known, others hardly known at of the Hall without the prior written Bach Recorder permission of the Hall Management. all. Each has its own story to tell, in Sinfonia to Cantata 169: Wigmore Hall is equipped with a Tuomo Suni ‘Loop’ to help hearing aid users receive illuminating Bach’s working processes Gott soll allein mein Herze haben clear sound without background Violin and revealing how he relentlessly noise. Patrons can use the facility by Bach switching their hearing aids over to ‘T’. pursued his aesthetic goal of musical Kinga Ujszászi In accordance with the requirements of Concerto for Three Violins in D City of Westminster, persons shall not perfection. Violin be permitted to stand or sit in any of the BWV 1064R gangways intersecting the seating, or Nadja Zwiener to sit in any of the other gangways. If Bach standing is permitted in the gangways Please do also join us on Sunday 5 Violin at the sides and rear of the seating, Brandenburg Concerto No 4 in G April for Bach's St John Passion with a it shall be limited to the numbers BWV 1049 indicated in the notices exhibited in those positions. stellar cast including Katie Bray, Robin Johannsen, Gwilym Bowen and Stephan Loges — directed from the keyboard by Harry Bicket. Alfonso Leal del Ojo Would patrons please ensure that mobile phones are switched off. Please stifle coughing as much as possible Chief Executive and ensure that watch alarms and any other electronic devices that may become audible are switched off. Cover image of Christine Sticher by Dario Acosta 4 5 (Nos 147, 35, 170, 47, 169, 49), but derive Johann Sebastian from pre-existing concerto material dating THE INSTRUMENTAL Bach from Bach’s Cöthen years. A decade later this material would be re-worked once (1685–1750) again to form his harpsichord concertos, MUSIC OF JS BACH Orchestral Suite No 4 in D suggesting that these cantata sinfonias BWV 1069 represent an intermediate stage in the JS Bach was no different from any other (1717–1723) account for the great music’s evolution in which the organ Ouverture eighteenth-century composer in the sense majority of his most famous instrumental leaves the supportive role it had always Bourée I & II that his music was composed to meet works: the keyboard works (such as the performed, but falls just short of becoming Gavotte the requirements of his job: in his early Klavierbüchlein and the Inventions), both a full concerto soloist. Menuet I & II years he was primarily an organist, with the partitas for unaccompanied violin and Réjouissance positions in Arnstadt, then Mühlhausen those for harpsichord, the cello suites, and Weimar. These were the years of the violin concertos, the Brandenburg This Suite in D, usually known as the Fourth his great organ works as well as his first concertos and the four orchestral suites all Brandenburg Concerto No 5 Orchestral Suite, is perhaps more familiar series of church cantatas. In 1716 Bach date from this period. in a version which includes three trumpets in D BWV 1050 had been disappointed not to be offered and timpani in addition to strings, oboes the vacant position of Kapellmeister in Six years on, however, political change in SOLOISTS: Laurence Cummings, and a bassoon. This is the orchestration in Weimar, but the following year this historic Cöthen led to Bach’s last significant move Lisa Beznosiuk and Nadja Zwiener the surviving Leipzig source, but we know error was corrected by a neighbouring to become Kantor at the Thomaskirche that the score is a re-working of an earlier courtly patron, Prince Leopold of Anhalt- in Leipzig, where once again he was Allegro original, and that Bach had no trumpets Cöthen, who offered Bach the position of primarily employed as a composer of Affettuoso and timpani in his Cöthen orchestra. Kapellmeister in Cöthen. church music, embarking immediately Allegro Simply removing these instruments on a new cycle of cantatas for every does no structural, harmonic or melodic Neighbours they might have been, but the Sunday of the year. Soon, though, he Bach’s beautifully autographed score of damage to the music, so it seems plausible social and religious attitudes prevailing in took on an additional role as Director the six ‘Brandenburg Concertos’ (a title that these parts were ingeniously added Weimar and Cöthen were worlds apart, of the Collegium Musicum which came not chosen by Bach himself but coined later for a much grander Leipzig civic and this was naturally reflected in the with an obligation to provide music by his second biographer Philip Spitta) is occasion. music Bach was required to provide. His for weekly concerts. Faced with this dated March 1721. In a carefully worded new employer, although personally an additional weekly deadline, he returned preface, the composer tells a small enthusiastic and well-informed musician, to his instrumental output from Cöthen, untruth, or at least allows an ambiguity had adopted the sectarian strictures of the frequently re-arranging pre-existing works Sinfonia to Cantata 35: to suggest one: he writes that the ‘fair Calvinist Reformed Church, within which to fit the richer instrumental resources at Geist und Seele wird verwirret copy’ of these six concertos was the result no more than the simplest, unadorned his disposal. Most of the original Cöthen of a commission from the Margrave of psalmody was permitted at services. Bach scores are now lost, meaning that the ORGAN: Tom Foster Brandenburg. The truth is that they were was therefore not required to compose surviving source materials for many of the all composed for the talented group of church music, nor to play the organ. best-known instrumental works in Baroque By 1725 Bach had already completed players Bach had assembled in Cöthen, Instead he directed the court orchestra music have survived only in these Leipzig two of his monumental cycles of cantatas. and their varied style and orchestrations (and provided its music); the only time in re-workings; a source of frustration, no Having written one for each Sunday of the strongly suggests they were not composed his life when he was free to concentrate doubt, for generations of musicologists year, he effectively took a year off before in one sitting, but over an extended period. exclusively on secular music. but also fertile territory for numerous embarking on a third cycle from which speculative attempts to reconstruct this Sinfonia is drawn. Between May and The fifth concerto is in some respects the Bach seized the opportunity with such the original Cöthen scores. One such November 1726 he wrote six cantatas most innovative of the set, even though, enthusiasm that his six years at Cöthen reconstruction opens tonight’s concert. which not only feature a solo organ so far as its structure is concerned, 6 7 it remains a concerto grosso (with Sinfonia to Cantata 169: Gott of whatever works he could lay his hands Brandenburg Concerto No 4 concertino instruments set against a on. He learned three main lessons, in G BWV 1049 ripieno string accompaniment). But soll allein mein Herze haben especially from Vivaldi’s concertos, which the famous harpsichord cadenza in the had a lasting effect on his style: how SOLOISTS: Tabea Debus, Sarah Humphrys ORGAN: Tom Foster first movement, which Bach extended to organise a movement by means of and Nadja Zwiener considerably whilst preparing his fair alternating orchestral sections (ritornelli) Cantata 169 is from the same cantata copy for submission to the Margrave, has and solo episodes; how to write striking Allegro cycle as No 35, heard in the first half of assured it an important place in the history and memorable themes made up of short Andante this programme, and they have a common of the keyboard concerto. Flute and motifs suited for soloistic elaboration; Presto origin; both are arrangements of lost violin make up the other two concertino and, in slow movements, the use of long- Cöthen concertos, both feature solo organ instruments, and here again Bach makes breathed sustained melodies supported by The fourth of the set of six Brandenburg and both were to re-emerge a decade a progressive step in his designation of a simple repeating bass lines. The concerto concertos is for solo violin and two later as harpsichord concertos. flute traversière, rather than recorder. for three violins is a fine illustration, not recorders accompanied by string just of what Bach had learned but also of orchestra. In typical Italian style the It is not known quite why Bach chose to The ripieno group, too, in which the how he reshaped the Italian’s style in his opening bars generate the ‘building write so much for solo organ in his third harpsichord doubles its role by providing own distinctive way.