(5) Opening Concert: On Community
Foto-Copyright:
Henner Fritzsche, Köthen (Anhalt)
Veranstaltungsdetails
Artists Clara Blessing oboe d’amoreMarcello Gatti traverso Köthener BachCollektiv Clara Blessing oboe d’amore
Veranstaltungsdetails
Artists
Clara Blessing oboe d’amore
Marcello Gatti traverso
Köthener BachCollektiv
Clara Blessing oboe d’amore
Anouk Krüger, Sina Bayer recorder
Marcello Gatti traverso
Waleska Sieczkowska, Martin Schneider, Iris Kengen, Ekaterina Perlina & Cécile Dorchêne violin
Elisabeth Sordia, Christian Goosses viola
Mercedez Ruiz violoncello
Sophia Scheifler double bass
Flóra Fábri harpsichord
Midori Seiler und Mayumi Hirasaki violin and conductors
Programme
On Community: Music by Johann Sebastian Bach
Cantata “O holder Tag, erwünschte Zeit” (BWV 210)
Recitative “O holder Tag, erwünschte Zeit”
Aria “Spielet ihr Lieder”
Partita in A minor for traverso (BWV 1013)
Sarabande
Concerto for oboe d’amore, strings and basso continuo (BWV 1055)
Allegro – Larghetto – Allegro ma non tanto
Cantata “Ich bin in mir vergnügt” (BWV 204)
Aria “Meine Seele sei vergnügt”
Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 (BWV 1049)
Allegro – Andante – Presto
Christmas Oratorio (BWV 248)
Aria “Nur ein Wink von seinen Händen”
Description
In the summer of 1741, Johann Sebastian Bach, Cantor of St. Thomas’s Church in Leipzig, travelled to Berlin. His visit was primarily a private one: Father Bach wanted to visit his son Carl Philipp Emanuel, who had been serving as a harpsichordist in the newly established court orchestra since 1740. During his stay, he lodged with a family friend, the physician and Privy Councillor Georg Ernst Stahl, who lived in a prestigious house directly on the grand boulevard Unter den Linden. From there, it was only a short distance to the City Palace, and it is reasonable to assume that Bach sought contact with members of the court orchestra during these weeks.
In mid-August, however, bad news from Leipzig forced Bach to leave Berlin in haste. A letter had informed him that his wife, Anna Magdalena, was seriously ill and that his presence was therefore urgently required. Yet shortly before his departure, Bach had left a musical trace in Berlin. His host, Georg Ernst Stahl, was preparing to marry Johanna Elisabeth Schrader, the daughter of an apothecary, in September. It seems clear that he had asked his friend Bach to provide music for the celebration. Bach readily agreed and presented him with the solo cantata “O holder Tag, erwünschte Zeit” (BWV 210.2).
This was not, however, a newly composed work, but largely a parody of the congratulatory cantata “O angenehme Melodei”, which Bach had written in 1729 for Duke Christian of Saxe-Weissenfels and performed several times in subsequent years for other dignitaries. Now, in Berlin in 1741, he—or a librettist—adapted the texts of the recitatives to suit the new occasion, thus creating a highly original wedding gift.
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During his time as Kapellmeister at the court in Köthen, Johann Sebastian Bach devoted himself intensively to the fascinating tonal possibilities of solo instruments, composing cycles of six works each for solo violin and solo violoncello. It was during the same period that he wrote the Partita in A minor for solo traverso (BWV 1013). Whether this work was likewise intended to form part of a larger, possibly six-part cycle remains unknown to this day. From a compositional perspective, writing for a solo flute presents even greater harmonic limitations than writing for a string instrument, since chords cannot be produced through double stops. The composer is thus faced with the complex task of creating a harmonic framework through pure monophony. In his Partita, Bach solves this problem with a keen sense of musical dramaturgy, while demanding an extraordinary degree of technical virtuosity from the soloist in all four movements.
Most of Bach’s instrumental concertos were likewise composed in Köthen, where he had an exceptionally accomplished court orchestra at his disposal. Bach later reused many of these works in Leipzig, usually in modified form and with different solo instruments. In the case of the Concerto in A major (BWV 1055), only a manuscript from Bach’s Leipzig period has survived, in which the harpsichord is specified as the solo instrument. It is nevertheless considered certain that Bach originally conceived the concerto for solo oboe d’amore. The exceptionally cantabile nature of the solo part supports this assumption, as its lyrical qualities can be rendered even more impressively on a wind instrument than on the harpsichord. Incidentally, the slow middle movement offers a surprisingly Christmas-like effect: Bach casts it in the characteristic 12/8 metre of a Siciliana.
Thus, while Bach’s primary activity in Köthen was composition, his talent for writing cantatas was called upon only twice a year: on New Year’s Day and on the birthday of Prince Leopold. Until 1721, the libretti for these Köthen cantatas were supplied by the Halle-based poet Christian Friedrich Hunold, who also published under the pseudonym “Menantes”. Bach continued to value Hunold’s poetry even after his tenure in Köthen had ended. Thus, in 1726 (or 1727), now serving as Cantor of St. Thomas’s Church in Leipzig, he used a libretto by the poet, who had since died, for the composition of the cantata “Ich bin in mir vergnügt” (BWV 204). He selected Hunold’s “Cantata von der Zufriedenheit” and supplemented the poetry with two poems of unknown provenance. In character, the text belongs to the fashionable category of the “moral cantata” of the time. Through numerous metaphors, it praises the contentment of the person who is at peace with himself, whom Hunold compares to a “pearl shell”. The specific occasion for which the cantata was composed remains unknown. Was it intended for concerts given by Leipzig’s Collegium Musicum? Was it commissioned by an influential Leipzig citizen? Or did Bach perhaps compose the work for a private celebration? His wife, Anna Magdalena, would certainly have been an ideal vocal soloist for the occasion …
In March 1721, Johann Sebastian Bach, then Kapellmeister at the Köthen court, compiled a collection of six instrumental concertos and dedicated it to Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg. Stylistically, these compositions belong to the popular form of the concerto grosso. Over the course of the six concertos, Bach gives all the participating instruments – apart from the double bass – solo passages in a wide variety of combinations.
In the Fourth Brandenburg Concerto in G major (BWV 1049), the group of solo instruments consists of two recorders and a violin, whose elaborate figurations rise above the string ensemble. The violin part in particular is marked by almost boundless virtuosity in the two fast outer movements. This instrumentation has led several musicologists to suggest that Bach may have intended a mythological reference: the contest between Phoebus (Apollo), traditionally associated with a stringed instrument, and Pan, who plays the flute. In the slow middle movement, Bach focuses entirely on the warm sonority of the recorders.
As Cantor of St. Thomas’s Church, Bach compiled a six-part cycle of cantatas around the turn of the year 1734/35, which he himself called the Christmas Oratorio. He derived almost all the arias and choruses of this extensive work from previously composed cantatas using the technique of parody. Newly composed, by contrast, were his setting of the Evangelist’s text and numerous chorale settings.
In the sixth cantata, intended for performance on the Feast of the Epiphany on 6 January, he included the soprano aria “Nur ein Wink von deinen Händen”. It is almost certainly also a parody, although the original – a presumably sacred festive cantata – has not survived.
Zeit
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€ 32 | 24 | conc. € 10
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Kirche St. Agnus
Stiftstraße 11, 06366 Köthen (Anhalt)barrierefreiKirche St. Agnus
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