Soprano Sarah Yanovitch (left) and bass Ryne Cherry excelled in a program mostly focused on music by J. S. Bach.
The title for this year’s Token Creek Festival is Harvest, and a lot of agricultural imagery is thrown about along the way. John Harbison and wife, Rose Mary, are co-founders and directors of the festival, and the opening program presented on Saturday, Aug. 25, titled Roots, addressed one of the major influences on his art. That is the music of J. S. Bach.
Bach was not the only composer involved, however. Harbison regards James Primosch (born 1956) as a latter-day counterpart to Bach in creating spiritually-founded music. So, we heard four selections by Primosch, who was there in person at the piano. They used diverse texts: one in Latin from Psalm 116, one in English translation from the Byzantine monk John Climacus, and two in English with texts by Susan Steward and Herman Melville. One pair was sung by soprano Sarah Yanovitch (a finalist in this summer’s Handel Aria Competition), the other by bass Ryne Cherry.
In this first encounter with Primosch and his music, I found that his vocal writing is smooth, idiomatic and flowing, but his blunt piano writing strikes me as less accompaniment than opposition to the vocal lines. Still, an interesting musical personality whose choral music I should like to hear.
Otherwise it was Bach all the way. There were some instrumental items. Three chorale elaborations, two of which originally for organ, were presented by a string quintet (quartet plus bass), in arrangements presumably by Harbison. And he himself played the Contrapunctus VII from The Art of Fugue, using the little positif organ imported for the occasion.
But Bach cantatas provided the solid meat of the program — cantatas for two soloists with minimal ensemble of strings and continuo, all with rarely heard music. There were two pairs of recitatives with arias from Cantatas 57 and 73, one pair for each of the two singers. And two complete cantatas of this type, both with chorale foundations, served to frame the program; Cantata 158 opened it and Cantata 58 closed it. Along the way, there were two arias with violin obbligatos, played by Rose Mary Harbison. Yanovitch displayed a beautiful lyric soprano voice, consistently projected. Cherry has a very strong and masculine bass voice, with notably excellent German diction, although projected a bit more fully than fit into the small “Barn” space.
Roots is repeated Sunday afternoon, Aug. 26. Of remaining concerts, one on Wednesday, Aug. 29, presents the Kepler Quartet in “progressive” works by Henry Cowell, Ben Johnson, Harry Partch and Stefano Scodanibbio. The program next weekend, Sept. 1-2, is built around works of Schumann, with bits by Mozart, Haydn and Harbison.
