REVIEW: Bach's Brandenburgs in the Spotlight at CMS

Dec 20

Dec 20 REVIEW: Bach's Brandenburgs in the Spotlight at CMS

by David Wolfson

Above photo by Cherylynn Tsushima.

December, 19, 2023

There's Handel's Messiah. There's the Nutcracker. And for the last 30 years, there's been the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's annual concert of the six Brandenburg Concertos by J. S. Bach. Like Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," they have no obvious connection to the holiday season, but they have nonetheless become a beloved holiday ritual for many. I caught the last of three performances at Alice Tully Hall.

Each year the pieces are performed in a different order; this year's was numerical, beginning with No.1 and ending with No. 6. As the first is the largest and most boisterous, this had the effect of a fanfare introducing smaller gems. The musicians performed standing, except of course for the harpsichordist and the cellists, and without a conductor. They used modern, rather than Baroque instruments (again, except of course for the harpsichordist). Solo and ripieno chores were shared, with everyone getting a moment in the spotlight as well as some time in the backup band.

Not unexpectedly, the levels of playing, ensemble and musicianship on display were extraordinarily high. Virtuosic solo lines were tossed off without a bead of sweat on anyone's brow. The graceful rhythmic shaping of phrases at cadences and other inflection points was seemingly telepathic.

There were a couple of relatively minor acoustic blemishes on the evening. In Concerto No. 1, David Bryd-Marrow and Tanner West on French horn overbalanced the rest of the ensemble, including the other soloists. (They sounded fabulous doing it, though.) David Washburn's piccolo trumpet, featured along with Tara Helen O'Connor (flute), Stephen Taylor (oboe) and Stella Chen (violin) in Concerto No. 2, was sometimes able to blend, but more often seemed to be soaring above everyone else, sprinkling piercing glitter over the proceedings. Taylor, playing into his stand, was most often near inaudible. In Concerto No. 5, Hyeyeon Park's soloistic harpsichord playing was likewise mostly covered by the modern instruments of the rest of the ensemble. When they dropped out for her extended solo passage, it became evident how fiercely she was ripping into the part—I seem to have written "Jimi Hendrix!" in my notes. It is not an exaggeration to say that the crowd went nuts for her.

Ani Kafavian and Demarre McGill were the violin and flute soloists in Concerto No. 5, along with Park. They had a lovely rapport and played off each other hauntingly in the slow movement.

By contrast, Concerto No. 4 featured McGill and O'Connor as a flute duo, with Richard Lin as the solo violinist. These came across as opposing forces, with the flutes keeping strict rhythm and the violin stretching time through most of the first movement. This was an interesting choice, but kept the piece from gelling. O'Connor's unaccompanied solo moments were pensive and lovely.

Concertos number three and six are written for strings, and came off here as the most compelling. No. 3, which has no soloists to speak of but gives equal time to each of the three violins, violas, and cellos, was the one that clicked into magic for me, that rare performance when the musicians, the music and the audience are subsumed into one. Both movements had a kinetic urgency to them, everyone playing on what jazz musicians would call "the front of the beat." Concerto No. 6, in which two violists are the soloists, had its own charm, not least because of the infectious enthusiasm of violist Matthew Lipman. Lipman was one of the younger musicians in the group, and had been seen grinning from ear to ear during Concerto No. 6. He and co-soloist and (one gathers) mentor Lawrence Dutton, a fellow faculty member at Stony Brook University, took the stage eagerly and made a strong case for the viola as a lead instrument. The two of them shared a post-performance hug that brought home the notion of chamber music as a community activity, as something that people who know each other do together. That aspect isn't always obvious from the audience, and it was a fitting accent to a lovely evening.

Before closing, I want to give a shout-out to the continuo players: Park, bassoonist Peter Kolkay, cellists Timothy Eddy, Mihai, Marica and Keith Robinson, and especially bassist Anthony Manzo. No glory for these folks (except Park), but you can't do Baroque music without them. Manzo, especially, had an outsize influence on the proceedings; when the double bass dropped in, the whole group cohered in a way that invited the audience right up onto the stage.

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David Wolfson holds a PhD in composition from Rutgers University, and has taught at Rutgers University, Montclair State University and Hunter College. He is enjoying an eclectic career, having composed opera, musical theatre, touring children’s musicals, and incidental music for plays; choral music, band music, orchestral music, chamber music, art songs, and music for solo piano; comedy songs, cabaret songs and one memorable score for an amusement park big-headed-costumed-character show. You can find more information here.