Saturday 21 February 2015 – Gabrieli Consort & Players in Bath Abbey

The real surprise of this final concert was the impact of Handel’s early Italian cantata Donna, che in ciel, written in Rome in 1707 for a celebration of the safe escape of the city from an earthquake. There is no hint here of the composer’s Lutheran upbringing as he immerses himself in the world of Italian opera and a Catholic theology which most Catholics would find difficult today.

The work is built around four arias, originally for castrati, but here sung by soprano Gillian Webster. The first and third arias are heroic pieces which use all the tricks of the baroque castrati and which caused no problems for Gillian Webster’s fluid coloratura. The second aria however is in a very different vein, its gentle softly unfolding melody as fine as anything he was to write in later operas.

A slight, unannounced, change to the order of the programme meant that the concert had opened with Corelli’s Concerto Grosso Op6 No4, which sparkled like sun off the Venetian Lagoon. The acoustic in the Abbey seemed to be particularly sympathetic to the light string writing and the heady counterpoint which Corelli creates.

Handel’s Dixit Dominus is more familiar to us but it is rare to find it as vibrantly attacked as it was under Paul MacCreesh and his Gabrieli forces. The opening chorus caught fire instantly and this seemed to carry through with an unstoppable force right up to the vibrant in saecula saeculorum.

This year’s Bath Bach Fest has proved yet again that small scale festivals can have all the excitement and quality of much larger events. Long may it continue!

Saturday 21 February 2015 – Angela Hewitt at the Assembly Rooms

The Art of Fugue is one of a small number of works which stand outside the usual canon because of their intense spiritual impact. As such they are not heard as often as one might expect and performances are all the more important. Angela Hewitt recently recorded the complete work and here gave us a peerless performance as well as a fascinating insight into the composition from the performer’s point of view.

Reminding us that this was no walk in the park she took us through the twenty sections with succinct illustrations to allow us to follow the musical narrative up to the point where Bach died before the completion of Contrapunctus XIV. While many performances end at this point she made a strong case for including Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit BWV668 as a conclusion to the work, as Bach was certainly editing the chorale immediately before he died and the text I stand before Your throne seems eminently fitting given the context both spiritually and emotionally.

A sold out Assembly Rooms was unusually hushed with a deep sense of concentration throughout. She brought an innocence and lightness to the opening fugues, the third being more reflective and the fifth wistful with a sense of yearning. The French style of the sixth moves us into new pastures, almost a new start before the seventh returns us to the more puritanical tones of the earlier fugues and a re-launch into pastures new with the eighth. The splendid articulation of the ninth hardly prepared us for the complexity and chromatic wanderings of the eleventh which marked a high point of emotional intensity of the cycle. By contrast the twelfth felt almost monastic in tone before the headier cantabile of the thirteenth.

The cool lines of the first canon came as something of a relief after the previous intensity with the simple clarity of the third canon being balm to the spirit. All of this prepared us for the final, fourteenth, fugue. Is there a sense of resignation here, a hint of the inevitability of death? The inclusion of B.A.C.H. woven into the fabric of the musical structure sounded like a voice from outside calling within the work itself. A magical, no mystical, moment – and nothing ever prepares one for the sudden catastrophic end.

The quiet confidence which permeates Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit more than justified its inclusion as a farewell to the cycle.

Angela Hewitt seemed tired at the end and it took more than a couple of recalls to the platform before she regained her sunny disposition. There are few performers who can get to the heart of Bach’s masterpiece today and we were privileged to hear it in a live performance.

Thankfully the CD is available for those who were not able to attend in person.

Friday 20 February 2015 – Academy of Ancient Music at the Assembly Rooms

The Assembly Rooms were full for the first concert devoted entirely to J S Bach this year. The Academy of Ancient Music under Bojan Cicic opened with a brisk account of Suite No 3 in its original version for strings. The great benefit of having a small ensemble, only seven string players plus harpsichord, is the clarity with which musical lines emerge, drawing attention to themselves as the work progresses. There was some lovely ornamentation from the first two violins in the Air and Jane Rogers demonstrated that there are no dull lines in Bach with the beauty of the viola melodies which lift out of the ensemble. The enthusiasm which pervaded the final Gigue was intoxicating.

The Double Violin Concerto is normally heard with full orchestra but here, again, it was given with a small ensemble and benefitted greatly in terms of tempi and clarity. The intense beauty of the Largo was almost overwhelming and the headlong rush of the Allegro could not dispel its impact. Rebecca Livermore and Bojan Cicic were finely balanced in their individual approaches to the solo lines.

We needed an interval at this point and the second half did not make so great a demand on the emotions.

Flautist Rachel Brown joined the ensemble for the Triple Concerto BWV1044. The heart of this work is the rolling, fluid articulation from the harpsichord to which Nicholas Parle brought finesse and a sense of humour as well as technical aplomb. The gentle Adagio for soloists alone leads to a final Allabreve which also draws attention to the harpsichord, with most of the forward movement of the musical line dependent upon the instrument. Presumably Bach wrote the part for himself!

The evening ended with the Overture in G minor BWV1070 which is probably not by J S Bach though was for many years assumed to be so. Certainly the writing often seems less complex and the inner voices – look only at the viola part – lacks the lyrical intensity of the other works heard this evening. That is not to say that the work was not highly enjoyable; if anything it was a welcome relaxation after the first half. The Aria comes to a sudden end before the dancelike Menuetto and Capriccio.

This morning Angela Hewitt plays the Art of Fugue at the Assembly Rooms.

Friday 20 February 2015 – Soloists from the OAE at the Guildhall

Works for flute, violin, viola da gamba and harpsichord made up the lunchtime recital in the Guildhall, opening with Handel’s B minor Trio Sonata HWV386b. This is a remarkably sombre work and the low lying flute part was at times lost towards the back of the hall. Even the final Allegro seems to have a cloud hanging over it, no matter how well played as it certainly was here.

Telemann’s Nouveau Quatuor No6 in E minor had both grace and charm, with lovely echo effects in the gentle Gracieusement and a reflective concluding Modere.

Bach’s Musical Offering deserves a concert to itself but it was good to hear the Trio Sonata if only for the way the individual musical lines enfold each other with such skill and sensitivity. In the Allegro we hear Frederick’s theme slipped into each instrument in turn, only to we spirited away in a mist of variations. It was the highlight of the afternoon though not the end of the concert.

Bringing us some warmth at last, Rameau’s Troisieme Concert in A major brought a smile not only with the enthusiasm of its rhythms but also the extrovert energy of the two concluding Tambourins.

The four soloists drawn from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment were Lisa Beznosiuk, flute; Alison Bury, violin; Jonathan Manson, viola da gamba, and James Johnstone, harpsichord.

This evening brings The Academy of Ancient Music to the Assembly Rooms for an all Bach programme.

Thursday 19 February 2015 – Vivaldi at St Mary’s

It may have been a wet February evening in Bath but La Serenissima wafted us to the Chiesa della Pieta in Venice to indulge ourselves in works for strings especially composed for the orphanage. It is too easy to dismiss Vivaldi’s works for strings as all being rather too similar, but the attentive ear can pick up nuances to delight and details which can all too easily slip past the inattentive.

The opening Concerto in D RV123 may recall the Four Seasons in its intensity but the Adagio floats like a passage from Gluck – way ahead of its time – and the joyous fugue of the final Allegro brings the work to a dancing conclusion.

There were two concerti for solo violin, in which leader Adrian Chandler was the adroit soloist. The F major concerto RV286, the so called concerto for the Feast of St Lawrence, has a gentle cantabile opening before an unexpectedly forthright attacking Largo and a rustic Allegro non molto which brought smiles to the faces of the players. The second concerto in G major RV307 somewhat disconcertingly opens in very much the same vein as the previous one but then moves into a more dynamic mode, the Adagio having an insistent pulse to it before the extrovert nobility of the final Allegro.

Between these we heard two motets, sung by soprano Mhairi Lawson. Anyone familiar with Vivaldi’s operas would immediately recognise the dense coloratura and passages of intense complexity which were obviously written with a fine operatic voice in mind. Both RV627 and RV632 focus on storms at sea, though the latter is lighter weight and has a strongly Handelian line in the third part. Both have concluding Alleluias which, while in keeping with the religious intentions of the text, seemed out of context with the dramatic flavour of the arias and recitatives. The exacting nature of these works brought no qualms for Mhairi Lawson who gave them the flair and authority they demand.

La Serenissima have the advantage of many fine soloists including essential support from Lynda Sayce on theorbo and James Johnstone at the chamber organ.

This lunchtime at 1.00pm at the Guildhall, soloists from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment play Handel, Telemann, Bach and Rameau.