Concert review: ‘The Art of Fugue’ reimagined at Northwest BachFest
Ever since Zuill Bailley assumed the role of artistic director of the Northwest Bach Festival, the theme of “Reimagining” has played a part in every program. As Bailley conceives it, reimagining consists of performing familiar works in unfamiliar ways or unexpected places.
Large orchestral works, such as Richard Strauss’ “Don Quixote,” appear as chamber music, piano parts are taken by a guitar, concerti become quintets, and so on. The goal is to make visible the hardened assumptions and prejudices that stand in the way of really hearing what we are listening to, and to make us peer into the mystery of where the music really is: Is it buried in the notes of the score? Is it wrapped in the sounds of particular instruments? How much emanates from the performers, from the composer, or from us?
The process of reimagining is not only possible, but necessary in performing J.S. Bach’s last great work, “The Art of Fugue.”
Bach’s manuscript does not even tell us what instrument or instruments to use in playing it, whether it is a work for keyboard, strings, or winds. Appropriately, on Friday night, it was performed at a winery by a quartet of strings that is not a string quartet: the Richter Ensemble, consisting of Rodolfo Richter and Rebecca Huber, violins; Julia Kuhn, viola; and Jennifer Morsches, cello. They are all terrific musicians, and each one of the 14 fugues that make up Bach’s “Art” allowed them to display their taste, their vivid personality, and their instrumental virtuosity.
An essential aspect of the Richter Ensemble is that the players use instruments configured as they would have been in Bach’s time, with gut strings and with different fingerboards and internal bracing than are found in modern instruments designed to be heard in different venues and to meet different musical demands than those known to Bach and his contemporaries.
The gut strings require less tension, producing a less aggressive sound, less focused on the fundamental pitch and more balanced in its overtones. As a result, the ensemble’s four voices are balanced in a way that is nearly impossible for a quartet of modern instruments, in which the higher voices dominate, and the middle and lower-range instruments struggle to be heard. We could hear clearly the subtleties of every player, and the incredibly imaginative and expressive turn of every phrase of Bach’s inexhaustible invention. It was a musical experience at once fiercely stimulating and deeply relaxing.
To illustrate the power of Bach’s influence, “The Art of Fugue” was interrupted at several points by performances of short works by important composers of our own time, including Luciano Berio (1925-2003), Henri Dutilleux (1916-2013) and Krzysztof Penderecki (b. 1933). As if to broaden the scope further, the Berio pieces evoked the styles of earlier composers Bruno Maderna, Bela Bartok, Zoltan Kodaly and Igor Stravinsky. All of these composers reacted against the emotionalism and cult of personality that dominated European music after Bach and sought greater clarity in the works of the German master.
Prior to the beginning of the concert proper, and in keeping with the Festival’s practice of providing a platform for local young artists, we had a chance to hear Alex Hjermstad, cellist and winner of this year’s Concerto Competition of the Spokane Youth Symphony. Unaccompanied (more reimagining here), he performed the first movement of the Cello Concerto in E minor of Edward Elgar, which he will be performing in full on March 17 of at the Martin Woldson Theater at the Fox. His performance, which portrayed Elgar’s anxious melancholy with remarkable understanding, reminded us that, while some things have been lost, much has also been gained in the evolution of string instruments since the time of Bach.