Ever upwards with Bach and Dante

You can see I'm in danger of being left behind on terra firma in both my big pursuits of the year, with four out of seven Bach cantatas to catch up on here - I'll deal with the other three alongside next today's in a future post - and four Dante lectures to comment upon, of which I missed one. Nevertheless I'll make some effort to be light and airy like the masters.

It seems I was premature in leaving Purgatorio behind in my previous Dante/Bach post: there turned out to be one more Warburg Institute class on the middle cantica. The most treasurable utterance, of many, that I took away from Professor Took, of many, was a very helpful summary of the Dantean essence in response to one of the questions in the discussion: 'Peope's lives are mixed, ambiguous in the extreme, simultaneously in hell, purgatory and paradise. In order to explore [the issue], he divides it out. The moment of truth lies somewhere in the unutterable complexity of the here and now'.

Even so, Dr Scafi prepared us for 'a difficult and allegorical Canto' (33, the last, of Purgatorio) in the shape of the final processional which represents the triumph of the church (sketched above by Botticelli, no less), complete with the four cardinal virtues, three theological virtues and Beast of the Apocalypse. The difficulties pale into insignificance once we reach Paradiso. Dante warns the slackers among us - and there must be many more now than in that religiously obsessive age - at the beginning of Canto 2 (with acknowledgment to Robert W Durling's literal translation):

   O voi chi siete in piccioletta barca,
desiderosi d'ascoltar, seguiti
dietro al mio legno, ché cantando varca:
   tornate a riveder li vostri liti,
non vi mettete in pelago, che forse,
perdendo me, rimarreste smarriti;
   l'acqua ch'io prendo già mai non si corse;
Minerva spira, e conducemi Appollo,
e nove Muse mi dimostran l'Orse.

O you who in little barks, desirous of listening, have followed after my ship that sails onward singing, turn back to see your shores again, do not put out on the deep sea, for perhaps, losing me, you would be lost; the waters that I enter have never before been crossed; Minerva inspires and Apollo leads me, and nine Muses point out to me the Bears.

Despite the comfort of mythological and classical signposts, the Christian theology, albeit that Dante has such a singular take on much of it, is what makes so many of Beatrice's homilies rather hard for the contemporary reader. So is the assurance of a now outdated cosmology; it can't all be taken as poetic metaphor, after all. Nevertheless, the guidance of our Warburg Dante and Virgil (who has long disappeared from the scene in the Divina Commedia, of course), and the thoroughness of the notes to the Durling edition (of which the Paradiso volume runs to 873 pages) make the most difficult journey worthwhile.

The best of our two most recent classes, for me, has been in the discussions. I'm getting antsy: why should Piccarda Donati and the empress Constanza be in the lowest sphere, the moon, in Canto 3 (pictured above), simply because men snatched them out of their nunneries and forced them into unspeakable wedlock? And why does the narrative of Dante's Thomas Aquinas about St Francis seem so hard and charmless to us, expecting at least something of the goodly saint's conversation with nature?

Dante's Beatrice provides part of the answer when it comes to the two paradisical ladies in Canto 4: they merely appear in the moon, and actually adorn the first sphere, the Empyrean. It's a matter of conscience. Well, that's half satisfactory. And Prof. Took thinks that the narrator Dante is playing the serpent when he asks them if they don't desire a higher place. Smiling and joyful Piccarda replies that 'it is constitutive of this blessed to stay within God's will, and thus .our very wills become one' ('Anzi e formale ad esto beato esse/tenersi dentro a la divina voglia/per ch'una fansi nostre voglie stesse', 3.79-81).

As for Francis, the harshness is to do, as Prof. Took put it, with Dante's 'stringent selectivity' - he has an axe to grind with the Dominicans and their tendency towards luxury in opposition to the Franciscans, led by a man who took Poverty as his Bride. He's 'too angry', has 'too much of an agenda' to spend time on the birds and the beasts.

Bach doesn't always do the expected thing, either, though his line of communication is always direct thanks to the expressive power of music. His first Ascension cantata for Leipzig, 'Wer da gläubert und getauft wird' comes not with trumpets and drums but an exquisite halo of two oboi d'amore, a short if uplifting opening chorus and an affirmative tenor aria with ardent violin obbligato. Loveliest is the chorale for soprano and mezzo in imitation with dancing continuo support, as Brides of Christ complete with joyous 'eia's- irresistible when Rilling's soloists here are Arleen Auger and Carolyn Watkinson.

That fine alto distinguishes BWV 44, 'Sie werden euch in den Bann tun', with a superb aria alongside oboe and bassoon. The opening is surprising: two parts of the text run respectively as a duet for tenor and bass and a harmonically wayward chorus in faster tempo. The chorale for tenor here has a distinctly weird, chromatic accompaniment from bassoon, there are fabulous adventures from the bass line in the virtuoso soprano aria, verging on the Handelian, and the closing chorale is familiar from its similar setting in the Matthew Passion.

BWV 172, 'Erschallet, ihr Lieder, erklinget, ihr Saiten!' for Whitsunday, is much more what one might expect for Ascension. It comes as no surprise to learn that its three celebratory trumpets, which go virtuoso-crazy in the bass aria (a good, if short alternative to Handel's 'The Trumpet Shall Sound'), were originally meant for a secular celebration, but they suit the celestial setting of the Weimar chapel (pictured below, no longer extant, alas) for which they were destined in 1714. The tenor aria offers some room for reflection, and a presumably deliberate harping on minor seconds in the 'weh' of 'wehet'.

Intimacy is apt for the Whitsun Monday and Tuesday cantatas, both of which begin with charming recitatives. BWV 173, 'Erhöhtes Fleisch und Blut", is another cantata adapted from a profane congratulatory set. It haas a radiant beginning (plus a non-chorale final number, unusual but not unique among the cantatas) and a lilting 6/8 tenor aria (beautifully sung on the Rilling set by his regular, Adalbert Kraus) with flute doubling first violin line to strong effect. The most original number, in which each of three verses, first for bass, then soprano, then the two together, is treated with increasing elaboration, is ruined by the only inadequate soprano I've heard on the Rilling set so far; let's hope she's a one-off.

BWV 175, 'Er rufet seinen Schafen mit Namen' captures the good-shepherd pastoral aspect with three recorders - and we're back to excellent soloists - Watkinson, Schreier, Huttenlocher - exchanged for two very florid trumpets before the finale choral reverts to the original colouring. Last night, in the only one of the three Gardiner cantata sequences I was able to catch over the Bach weekend at the Barbican, there was equal rustic beauty in the perfect correspondence between countertenor Reginald Mobley and Rachel Beckett and Christine Garratt on two transverse flautes for the aria 'Wohl euch, ihr auserwählten Seelen' in BWV 20. But I feel that's all I can write on the evening's cornucopia of riches for now, lest you feel drowned in BWV numbers. More anon.

To the Mendelssohn House

On my first visit to Leipzig back in December - I can't believe it took so long before I saw the city - Bach had to be the priority. And he was a kind of starting-point this time, because the Nikolaikirche was his second home after the Thomaskirche, and I found myself on the fifth floor of a hotel with perhaps the best view I've had in any city; namely of the church, which filled the entire window.

I could see it at sunset

and at sunrise

and besides, the street has a row of wonderful second hand bookshops which I spent some time in on my last visit. The square was now devoid of its Christmas market stalls but there was the solitary palm column mirroring the ones within the Nikolaikirche, its shadow serving as a kind of sundial on the building where Wagner went to school (there's a Wagner Museum in the basement, nicely laid out, but it had no treasures and didn't teach me anything; I whizzed around it rather quickly).

Leipzig would have to be the mecca for musicians in terms of its astounding heritage - Bach, Schumann, Mendelssohn, young Wagner - and it treasures its orchestra. I was here for the inauguration of already-great Andris Nelsons as the 21st Gewandhauskapellmeister, about which I've written on The Arts Desk. Needless to say, the whole city viewed this with pride in a way that would be unimaginable here - can you imagine Simon Rattle plastered over Kings Cross to celebrate his return to the UK as principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra?

Note, too, it's 'Andris', like 'Mirga'. A PR friend of mine found this cheesy, but I disagree - it suggests all the breaking down of boundaries since the Call-Me-Maestro era, and Andris is the most genial and natural of conductors.

I had the day of the concert free to cover everything I hadn't seen on that first visit, and I managed a great deal of it. Namely morning in the superbly designed MdBK (Museum der Bildenden Kunste, in other words the main art gallery), for which another blog entry will be necessary, a pausa in the Stadtcafe Riquet

where I couldn't resist a photo of the table with the best Mohntorte (poppyseed cake) I've had next to the Cafe Frauenhuber in Vienna

and then an afternoon walk following part of the Leipzig Music Trail, helpfully studded with symbols on every pavement. It led me, about five minutes past the Gewandhaus on the other side of the ring road, to Königstraße 3, a large house built in 1843-4 as part of a new residential district.

In August 1845, the 34-year-old Mendelssohn, who over the previous decade had transformed the Leipzig Gewandhausorchter into a thing of wonder,  moved into the very substantial apartment on the first floor with his wife Cecile and four children. The building and garden were in a fairly ruinous state before the International Mendelssohn-Stiftung took it over and planned a hugely impressive restoration in the 1990s.  I love it that certain parts of the building, namely the old staircase, need careful treading

and the modernisation of the rest, starting with a reception desk and coffee shop manned by really friendly young women, is a treat. The nine main rooms on the first floor have been reconstructed with meticulous taste. It helps that Felix Moscheles left several watercolours of the rooms just after Mendelssohn's death, on Cecile's invitation, including - most important of all - the study where he composed Elijah.

What we have now isn't identical, but the bright yellow combines with the sunshine that flooded the apartment on the freezing cold and ice-windy but brilliant afternoon I visited.

 
It's important to see Mendelssohn's idols in the busts of Goethe and Bach, for whom he did so much during his time in their shared city of music.

 
Much else is in the Biedermeier style. The room opposite has most of the original furniture, including a cabinet containing bronze statuettes of Voltaire (which you can see on the right) and Rousseau

 
and though you can't see it from the way the rooms are arranged and cordoned, a small-scale colour reproduction of Titian's Assumption in Venice's Frari hangs above the recamiere here.

The Music Room which hosts regular events has been lovingly restored in careful application of paintwork, reconstructed stove and chandelier and careful work on the 1830 trumeau.

Objects on permanent loan from the Museum of the History of the City of Leipzig are sensitively presented, many of them in pull-out drawers below some prize exhibits. This is the 16 year old Mendelssohn's translation of Terence's Andria as 'The Maiden of Andros', with which he surprised his teacher Heyse. The work of 'F****' was published by Heyse with an introduction in 1826.

Multitalented Felix was also an accomplished watercolourist, and having seen many of his views of Switzerland in a book of Swiss landscapes given to me by my Zurich-based friend Lottie, I was delighted to see even more of the originals given a room to themselves here. Rather fond of this unfinished view of a tree-lined promenade in Interlaken. Mendelssohn had little confidence in his ability to draw figures, which is why the lady remains sketchy.

A nice creative touch is the use of the kitchen to display Mendelssohn's travels in a series of commemorative plates

with an introduction which made me especially happy:

Upstairs are the Archive devoted to that great man and Gewandhaus presiding genius for many years Kurt Masur

and, more important still, a series of rooms devoted to Felix's fabulously gifted sister Fanny, named throughout as Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel. Her artist husband gracefully adorned many of her manuscripts,

and I sat in one of the rooms listening to a recording by Lauma Skride (sister of Baibe, who was playing in the Berg Violin Concerto later) of three movements from her piano series Die Jahr, a predecessor of Tchaikovsky's The Seasons (which of course should be The Months). No small talent, this. It is saddening to read in the exhibition of how her brother prohibited her from publishing her music. The same old story of male dominance which pertained to Alma Mahler, whose husband made it clear there weren't room for two composers in one household. That document is highlighted, but there is also plenty of memorabilia here too, not least from time spent in Rome.

The garden has a recent bust of Mendelssohn

and a chastening exhibition in the outbuilding of Mendelssohn and the Nazis. I was saddened to see a picture of Strauss conducting under a giant swastika as late as 1938 - I have been too much the apologist for the extent of his compliance with a regime he hated - and there's also the shocking story of Beecham and the LPO visiting Leipzig in 1936, laying a wreath at the foot of the statue on 9 November, only to return the next day to find it gone. To his credit, the Mayor resigned in protest at this disgrace. A reproduction of the statue was placed in 2008 at the back of the Thomaskirche (this from my first visit last December)

and Mendelssohn has left us a watercolour of the church for which Bach composed so many of his cantata masterpieces.

The Music Trail, meanwhile, leads one on to the Grieg Memorial Centre in the next block. Grieg was the guest of publishers Abraham and Hinrichsen during his Leipzig stays. 

With opening hours limited to Friday afternoons and Saturdays, there was no chance of visiting, so I contented myself with the sight of the plaque and a bust in the neighbouring garden. 

The building which housed the former Peters Music Library is nearby, too, and then you come to the splendid Museum complex including the Museum of Musical Instruments and the graveyard at the back where Bach was originally buried (members of the Mendelssohn family, too), but that was locked and I had no time on this visit to see the oldest fortepiano, so on I pressed to the apartment in which Robert Schumann and Clara Wieck spent the first year of their marriage, on the first floor of Inselstraße 18.

This is a far less lavishly maintained museum than the Mendelssohn-Haus; perhaps more has gone into the Schumannhaus in Bonn. But it had an old-fashioned charm, one of domineering father Wieck's pianos

and a rather less period-conscious assemblage of copies of reproductions favoured by Schumann

as well as an equally well-maintained staircase.

Time for the evening's concert was drawing closer, so I headed back via the Wagner memorial behind the Opera House, surrounded by snowdrops

and the frozen pond below it.

There will be plenty more of that ice in my next photojournal - I've recently returned from Bodø, well above the Arctic Circle in Norway, and that really was a winter wonderland.

BWV 3

Having got the long-festering cri de coeur of the previous entry off my chest (forgive the mixed topography), let's turn the water into wine by backtracking (or Bachtracking) to Wedding at Cana day (detail above from Duccio; below, Tintoretto's version). Last Sunday's Bach cantata looks from the numbering like it might be an early one, but it continues the strain I've been finding especially wonderful in the new works for the Leipzig year of 1725.

Like BWVs 123 and 124, for Epiphany and the first Sunday thereafter, 'Ach Gott, wie manches Herzeleid' begins with  a choral movements offering heavenly roles for oboe(s) d'amore. And maybe it's only because I heard this one recently that I think it the most amazing of all. Maze-y, too; though the cantus firmus of the basses is doubled with trombone, what goes on above and around includes some of Bach's most giddying harmonic progressions. I'd call it gorgeous and sensual, though it's essentially there to underline the 'deep affliction' and 'sorrow' out of which mankind must struggle. Nevertheless the key is that bright A major which will return in the duet of soprano and alto before the final chorale (Gardiner calls that the 'most winning music' of the cantata, but I disagree again - it's chaste compared to the opening number, for all the dancing vigour of a typical upper-voices duet, and the oboes d'amore double the violin line).

The water which must be turned into wine - Bach doesn't even make a passing reference in this cantata for the day of the Cana reading - is there, in complex form, in the recitatives and the bass aria, deliberately uneasy in its writing, with plenty of minor seconds and accents on 'angst' and 'pein'. It's so beautifully negotiated by the finest bass-baritone on Rilling's set, Philippe Huttenlocher, whom I also remember as an excellent Papageno. Though I'm equally happy to visit Gardiner's set now for Gerald Finley.

More revolutionary, if not necessarily greater, is another No. 3, Beethoven's 'Eroica' Symphony. I joke with my young pal Jonathan Bloxham that I'm collecting his Beethoven cycle; 6 and 7 he conducted with shining graduates, while this excellent concert in the beautifully situated church of St Mary-at-Hill down Lovat Lane close to the Monument was with the hard-working mostly amateur players of the Hertfordshire Chamber Orchestra.

Still, he got the same energy levels, powerful accents - those repeated chords in the first movement I've never found more impressive -  and some fine phrasing, while the general approach is one I like best, fast-moving but never rushed. What's interesting is where the challenges lie for amateurs - all those pattery string notes in the scherzo, the constant chatter of the finale, which meant the first half of the symphony, the 'heroic' side, was better than the second. But it was all good.

Fabulous, too, to hear Jonathan as cellist-conductor duetting with his confrere at the Yehudi Menuhin School and the Guildhall Michael Petrov in Vivaldi's G minor Concerto for two cellos (amazing finale, sounds like syncopated Elgar). Michael, who came here from Bulgaria as a teenager and seems to me to have unaccented English, has a natural projection and golden sound which bode well for his appearance at what may be the last Europe Day Concert on 9 May - Bulgaria has just taken up the Presidency of the European Council (and the first and third photos were taken by Jonathan's assistant Dorian Todorov, another Bulgarian and forging a parallel career as conductor). Full steam ahead now.

Brilliant Bulgarians marked the new Presidency of the European Council, also at St John's Smith Square, on 9 January.  Mastery in any sphere is to be applauded, and though I'm not sure I would sit through more than about 45 minutes of a jazz duo like the Wladigeroff Brothers, I found the sound if not always the substance (the compositions were mostly theirs) compelling - not least because St John's, from the back row at least, turns out to be a fabulous acoustic not just for piano but also trumpet.

Scions of a distinguished composing family - grandfather Pancho is a big figure in Bulgaria - Alexander and Konstantin aren't just brothers; they're identical twins, and the statement that music in their blood isn't just an empty cliche. There were some stunning novelty moments; Alexander at several points played two trumpets at once, in Roma-style thirds (pictured above in the second of three photos by Jamie Smith). The range of 'horns', too, made for some surprising changes of timbre, along with some splendid forays into 5/4 and 7/8 time.

Even so, it was just as well that they were offset by the London Bulgarian Choir. An amateur group, its women have been trained by the vivacious Dessislava Stefanova to sing in that open manner familiar in many eastern folk choirs (I missed the throat singing at the beginning). Brave of them and the Wladigeroff Brothers to try their own, poppy version of the Ode to Joy sung in three languages, but the musical highlight of European co-operation for me was one on film, Swiss animation brilliantly timed to a very lively number.

Meanwhile, BWV 3 seems to be one of the few from the Rilling cantatas series on YouTube. I see from the last time I tried to embed performances that many eventually vanish. And I do recommend that you buy the big 71-CD box. But this will show you why I like the interpretations so much.

Ending and beginning with Bach

This year's attempt to play a Bach cantata on every appropriate Sunday and holy day of the year stands a better chance of lasting than my 2013 attempt, which fizzled out at Easter because I hadn't ordered up the right CDs in time (I could have done it via YouTube, but I was too sound- and performance-fussy). With the Hänssler box of Rilling's Bachakademie Edition to hand, and a good online guide to what cantatas should be heard/performed when, I'm all set. I describe how I came round to Rilling, with his superb team of soloists led by Arleen Auger, a choir projecting the meaning of the German texts and various magnificent oboes, in a feature on The Arts Desk.

Properly the listening should have begun at advent, but I started with the perfect aria, "Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn", launching BWV 132, from Auger with oboe obbligato, the day before Christmas Day, and then followed the seasonal route with individual cantatas rather than those making up the Christmas Oratorio. I've made due notes, but should start here by observing the latest two beauties, BWV 28 "Gottlob! Nun geht des Jahren Ende" on New Year's Eve and BWV 171, "Gott, wie dein Name, so ist auch dein Ruhm", which we listened to on Jill's Bose up in Southrepps on New Year's Day, aka the Feast of the Circumcision or Snip Day. Apologies if in the ensuing I don't dwell much on the text - I shall when Bach illuminates the words in a special way.

Again, Auger led the way, heralded by striking figures from two oboes and oboe da caccia in harmony, in BWV 28, composed in Bach's third year at Leipzig for the end of 1725. There's a double whammy of glory here - the ensuing motet treatment of a chorale is one of Bach's most giddying contrapuntal inspirations, and Gardiner had it performed at the very end of his 2000 Bach Pilgrimage. A tenor recit is haloed by strings and leads to a dancing duet; the final chorale is enhanced by brass (cornet and three trombones).

BWV 171 comes after the three Leipzig cycles and was first performed on New Year's Day 1729. The opening choral fugue starts in old-fashioned style, but the entry of the first trumpet with the theme is a real wake-up call. In Gardiner's words, 'the music suddenly acquires a new lustre and seems propelled forwards to a different era for this assertion of God's all-encompassing dominion and power'. Violin obbligati enrich the tenor and soprano arias (the latter adapted from a number in a secular cantata where the instrument illustrates a 'gentle wind'), while there's typical originality from Bach in the bass's arioso-recitative, with striking illumination from the two oboes. As in BWV 28, but even more strikingly, the brass adds glory to the final chorale.

The above photos of Leipzig's Thomaskirche were taken on what turned out to be a wonderful trip just before Christmas, ostensibly to see and write about the Blüthner Piano Factory - it was enlightening, and write I shall anon - but which opened up to embrace two performances at the Opera (already described lower down the blog) and an afternoon/evening at large in the centre of town.

I won't deny that I got pleasantly teary sitting as near as I could to Bach's grave in the Thomaskirche chancel. His bones had been dug up from the cemetery of the Johanniskirche, placed inside the church in 1900 and moved here following that church's destruction in World War Two in 1949 (it is perhaps even more shocking that the Soviets dynamited the University Church, where Bach was director of holiday services, as late as 1968).

At last I completed the journey which had begun with the unforgettable performance of the B minor Mass by Collegium 1704 around the font where Bach was baptised in Eisenach.

So much has happened to honour Bach in the last few decades. The Nikolaikirche was stripped of the Baroque refurbishing which the composer would have known during his tenure in the 1880s; further re-Gothicization, returning the 'hall' church to how it looked in 1496, took place in the early 1960s. But the biggest restoration took place in time for the 250th anniversary of Bach's death on 28 July 2000. Much of the funding for this and other projects has come from the Thomaskirche-Bach 2000 Assocation, and it's heartening to see the list of names involved in the state-of-the-art Bach Museum opposite the church.

The Bachs lived in the old St Thomas School, which no longer survives, but this house at Thomaskirchof 16 was the residence of their good friends the Boses, a merchant family which had the 16th century building refurbished in Baroque style. The beautifully designed museum rooms are mostly geared towards education about the essence of Bach's music and his life, with plenty of listening posts, but they do include a chest which was identified as late as 2009 as coming from Bach's household (thanks to a seal)

and the restored organ console from the destroyed Johanneskirche at which Bach played in 1743.

There's a nicely displayed room of musical instruments to complement the ones to be seen in the Thomaskirche, including this handsome viola d'amore.

Holiest of holies, though, in the 'Treasure Room' is a magnificent bequest, by far the more brilliant of the only two portraits of Bach painted in his lifetime by Leipzig artist Elias Gottlob Haussmann in 174 and showing Bach holding a score entitled ‘Canon triplex à 6 Voc: per J. S. Bach’. It was bequeathed to the Leipzig Bach Archive by American musicologist and philanthropist William H Scheide, who died last November aged 101 (the other work, far duller, is in the main city museum, which I didn't have time to visit).

This is manuscript heaven, too. The full autograph score and the individual parts of the Cantata BWV 20, 'O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort', can be seen in the museum together for the first time ever. The former is in a superb little exhibition on Bach and Luther, finishing on 28 January, which also includes a grand Luther Bible with Bach's name inscribed in his own hand. 

I left the Museum after dark, though there was abundant life in town as the Leipzigers flocked to the stalls of the Christmas Market, which spreads outwards along most streets from the central Markt. And I did just manage to see the outlandish interior of the Nikolaikirche, redone long after Bach was master there, between 1784 and 1797, in neo-classical style by J F C Dauthe. The palm columns are something else.

Handsome as it unquestionably is from the exterior, the Nikolaikirche is celebrated now as the peaceful source of protests which led to the fall of the East German regime in Autumn 1989. The Rev. C Führer's description of those events in the green pamphlet is movingly phrased, especially as it heads towards the quiet denouement of 7 October:

...the prayers for peace took place in unbelievable calm and concentration. Shortly before the end, before the Bishop gave his blessing, appeals by Professor Masur, chief conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, and others who supported our call for non-violence, were read out. The solidarity between church, art, music and the gospel was of importance in the threatening situation of those days.

The prayers for peace ended with the Bishop's blessing and the urgent call for non-violence. More than 2,000 people leaving the church were welcomed by tens of thousands waiting outside with candles in their hands - an unforgettable moment. Two hands are necessary to carry a candle and to protect it from extinguishing so that you cannot carry stones or clubs at the same time. The miracle occurred.