Kent Sweitzer
Madison Bach Musicians artistic director Trevor Stephenson.
The Madison Bach Musicians’ Baroque Holiday Concert has become, by this eighth example, an established tradition. This year’s event, however, rested upon past laurels.
The program on Dec. 8 was unusually brief, and only a few of the works related to Christmas. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the focus was rather diffuse; the ensemble presented a chronological thread, starting with music of the 16th-century Renaissance, then Baroque from the 17th-century, and finally a brace of Bach.
Another drawback was the venue. The First Congregational Church has an extremely big, long hall. Certainly, it was gratifying to see it almost full and with so many seats reserved for season subscribers, attesting to considerable growth in public support for the musicians. But much of this music did not belong in such a large space.
One exception was two segments of Missa Pange Lingua, by Josquin des Préz (ca.1455-1521), which opened the concert. But the three examples from the Kleine geistliche Konzerte (Small Sacred Concertos) by Heinrich Schütz were designed for small-scale Lutheran concerts during the terrible Thirty Years War. The same is true for the duet from Bach’s Cantata BWV 78 from almost a century later. The intentions for the concluding Bach motet, Lobet den Herrn alle Heiden are uncertain, and the work might have been imagined in a sizable hall. But we can’t be sure.
Certainly, the two examples of hymn settings by Bach were meant for simple domestic enjoyment. Likewise, the Sonata in G (BWV 1027 for viola da gamba and harpsichord) is not “concert” music in any modern sense, but was meant for private enjoyment. And the two pieces from the lute collection by Alessandro Piccinini (1566-ca.1638), were meant for the enjoyment of the player and maybe a few friends. In the concert hall, these were close to inaudible.
Although I question the choice to present Josquin’s music and the Bach motet with only a vocal quartet rather than a larger choir, the performers demonstrated high levels of artistic skill. The singing was splendid, but unfortunately, the diction (particularly in the high female ranges) was quite poor in Latin and not much better in German.
The seven performers all joined together just for the Bach motet, the only one of his “choral” motets with its own individual continuo part written out. The vocalists seemed to love singing it, and they repeated its final segment as an encore, to the audience’s delight.
