{"id":42706,"date":"2017-02-10T06:52:22","date_gmt":"2017-02-10T11:52:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=42706"},"modified":"2017-02-10T10:58:58","modified_gmt":"2017-02-10T15:58:58","slug":"scrutiny-tafelmusiks-bach-tapestry-a-remarkable-musical-tribute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2017\/02\/10\/scrutiny-tafelmusiks-bach-tapestry-a-remarkable-musical-tribute\/","title":{"rendered":"SCRUTINY | Tafelmusik\u2019s Bach Tapestry A Remarkable Musical Tribute"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tafelmusik
Tafelmusik Chamber Choir (Photo: John Terauds)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bach Tapestry. Tafelmusik Orchestra and Chamber Choir, directed by Ivars Taurins. Feb. 9 at Jeanne Lamon Hall, Trinity-St Paul\u2019s Centre. Repeats to Feb. 12. Additional performance at George Weston Recital Hall on Feb. 14<\/a><\/h3>\n

Even people who are loosely interested in classical music can probably name Johann Sebastian Bach when asked to name the Top 10 composers of the genre. Cellist Pablo Casals reintroduced the world to the Suites for unaccompanied cello, and Glenn Gould made his solo keyboard works famous to a wide audience in the 20th\u00a0<\/span>century.<\/p>\n

Period performance ensembles, like Tafelmusik, breathed fresh life into his orchestral works right after that, in live concerts and on crisp-sounding digital recordings. Churchgoers have had a long acquaintanceship with Bach\u2019s music for pipe organ, and with his arrangements of some of the great Lutheran chorales. Lovers of choral music wait for opportunities to hear his great settings of the Passion stories from the Gospels of Matthew and John.<\/p>\n

In the 1960s and 1970s, long-haired geeky adventurers played with Bach\u2019s early 18th<\/span> century compositions on synthesizers, and even added some dance beats.<\/p>\n

But, in the wider perspective, these all constitute bits and pieces of the remarkable output of a remarkable composer \u2014\u00a0one that a mainstream listener is rarely given the opportunity to appreciate. Our best-attended concert presenter in the city, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, rarely programs Bach (and we have Andrew Davis to thank for the rare opportunities that do arise). Despite the fact that he wrote more than 1,000 pieces of music, there are no operas by Bach, no ballet score, no incidental music for the theatre.<\/p>\n

Kudos, then, to Tafelmusik Chamber Orchestra music director Ivars Taurins for putting together an imaginative cross-section of Bach\u2019s creations, with a focus on the Cantatas, the choral works he mostly wrote while he was the music director at St Thomas\u2019s Church in Leipzig.<\/p>\n

In the program notes, Taurins writes, \u201cI have attempted in curating this Bach Tapestry to present Bach\u2019s mastery and genius as a composer by creating an aural gallery of choral movements from his cantatas \u2014 many of them rarely heard in concert \u2014 and to complement these choruses by interweaving secular instrumental works.\u201d<\/p>\n

True to his word, Taurins takes us through a carefully selected and matched series of pieces and excerpts that are like a J.S. Bach tasting menu. It teases our ears as if they were taste buds, making us want to experience more of these flavours.<\/p>\n

Even calling them flavours doesn\u2019t begin to do justice to what Bach created. We know him as a master of counterpoint \u2014 the elaborate craft of setting voice against voice, be it vocal or instrumental. But the German composer also knew how to write a beautiful, memorable melody, and stretch it over creative articulations of clever harmonies. Bach knew how to manipulate our emotions, from deepest sadness to irrepressible joy.<\/p>\n

The more one studies Bach, the more one appreciates the meaning of creativity and genius, two words that are tossed around a bit too carelessly these days. The more one dives into the structure of this man\u2019s work, the more one feels compelled to drop down on one\u2019s knees in awe of the mind that could conceive of it, and how these creations continue to speak to us through the centuries. This music truly puts us in touch with the eternal.<\/p>\n

The late and lamented Stuart Hamilton, Canada\u2019s great champion of opera and art song, spent his last days with Bach. And, as Gould is quoted in the program as saying, if he were stranded on a desert island, all he would need to keep him company is the music from this single composer.<\/p>\n

Fortunately for everyone who was present at the first performance at Trinity-St Paul\u2019s on Thursday night, both the program and the quality of the music-making were worthy of the impossibly high standard and varied challenges Bach left for us to face.<\/p>\n

The Tafelmusik Chamber Choir, which is celebrating its 35 years with its founding music director still with them, is a model of technical precision and dynamic balance. Under Taurins\u2019 leadership, it gave soul-stirring interpretations of choruses from 10 cantatas, including the well-loved, \u201cJesu, Joy of Man\u2019s Desiring.\u201d We also heard the Kyrie and Gloria movements from the great Mass in G Major, and the concert closed with the Cum sancto spiritu<\/em> movement from the same work. The Mass in G Major is not performed very often, and it was a pleasure to hear these richly textured movement\u00a0\u2014 all of which Bach adapted from his cantatas. The choir\u2019s phrasing was impeccable, and the level of nuance director and singers achieved was remarkable. The orchestra were worthy, equal partners in the effort.<\/p>\n

Breaking up some of the choral singing were a chamber work for two solo violins that didn\u2019t quite lift off as gracefully from the page as it could have, the Sarabande from the fifth French Suite, played by Charlotte Nediger on harpsichord (before she revealed that she had sprained one hand and was playing with only nine fingers), and a Sinfonia, a.k.a. instrumental interlude, from Cantata 196.<\/p>\n

There was also a world premiere, if you can imagine it, of Bach\u2019s Italian Concerto, which he wrote for solo harpsichord, reimagined as a string concerto by Taurins and Nediger. Bach\u2019s original was meant to be an echo of Italian-style (read, Vivaldi) concerti for strings, so perhaps we can call Tafelmusik\u2019s effort a 21st-century attempt at Baroque reverse engineering. The result was colourful in a pastel kind of way, and engaging. I suspect we didn\u2019t hear the most polished interpretation possible on Thursday night, so it would be worth programming it again to experience the softer edges, compared to what we\u2019re used to hearing from pianists and harpsichordists.<\/p>\n

This program showed off Tafelmusik \u2014 choir as well as orchestra \u2014 in their best light when they were performing as a whole. It is a dense, colourful, dramatic evening of music to stimulate the mind as well as the emotions. It is a fabulously rich tribute to the composer we can inarguably call the most inventive in the Western musical canon. It is a concert that is as satisfying to a diehard devotee as to a bewildered newcomer. So don\u2019t miss this opportunity, because getting so much goodness in such a concentrated form around such a singular artist is a rare thing.<\/p>\n

For more REVIEWS, click HERE<\/u><\/a>.<\/h3>\n

#LUDWIGVAN<\/i><\/b><\/h3>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tafelmusik weaves together an imaginative cross-section of Bach\u2019s creations for an evening of musical tapestries at Jeanne Lamon Hall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39783,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6439,19,21,52,63],"tags":[1740,3224],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/11\/Tafel_Choir.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-b6O","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42706"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42706"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42720,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42706\/revisions\/42720"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42706"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=42706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}