Spiegelungen • NeoBarock
As they are perhaps now well-known to do, NeoBarock on this album are prepared to present a piece—in this case Bach’s Musical Offering, BWV 1079—alongside fodder that “doesn’t belong.” The juxtaposition of old and new may appeal to those wanting to hear Bach’s music in a contemporary context. It is a bit confusing to me, given the titles of their albums, it may well obfuscate which major work is being presented on their albums. (As an aside, their album entitled Musik der Einsamkeit featured Bach’s Kunst der Fuge plus spoken German by the Austrian writer Robert Schneider. I got around this by silencing the spoken tracks so I could just get to the music!)
In the case of this recording, Viktor Kalabis’s canonic inventions are included along with Isang Yun’s solo violin piece, quoting the royal theme. In this case, music from different eras combined, but thankfully in this case I felt there was an affinity I could appreciate between Bach and the other works in terms of instrumentation focus on canons and the aforementioned royal theme.
Kalabis’s canonic inventions were written for his wife, Mahan Esfahani’s mentor, Zuzana Růžičková. The style difference is shocking enough to pull us out of the alleged concert in Potsdam and acts, for me at least, as a palette cleanser. The esoteric nature of track 6’s invention is something I find difficult to appreciate on its own; as a musician, I’d like to see the score of this piece, to understand Kalabis’ use of canon. In Bach’s harmonic language, his pieces teeter upon the absurd with regard to dissonance. Out of the Bachian context, the pieces take on a kaleidoscope of harmonic colors.
Yun’s eight-minute work for solo violin starts us in a far more familiar place, quoting the theme that became the signature to Bach’s Offering. I have not heard this piece before, but I like that it’s played without vibrato. Maren Ries uses an older violin, a Landolfi from 1765; it’s not listed as a “baroque” violin, compared to his Hargrave/Amati. That this piece goes to places that Bach would not have recognized isn’t so concerning; it’s interesting to me in so far as we get to hear another possibility of how we can treat the King’s chromatic theme. In some ways, the harmonic places this piece evolves to seems good company to Kalabis’ works for keyboard.
I’m one to talk. During my senior year in college I wrote an original piece that too used the royal theme. My Entrance, Passage, and Fugue was eventually adopted for wind ensemble and while it too departed from the style used by Bach, I decided to keep things within harmonic language that would have been more familiar to Bach.
The sound in the performance of the six-part Ricercar is nice in this recording. Stanislav Gres, NeoBarock’s harpsichordist, uses two Bruce Kennedy instruments for this recording, using a Mietke copy for the Bach and a Blanchet copy for the Kalabis; the German one is my preferred one, for its sound, which is ultimately less bright. The tempo, for me, I’d prefer a few clicks faster. That said, if one is trying to re-create the supposed re-creation of this piece, with Bach composing it on the fly, slow and careful is what you might want.
I appreciate the NeoBarock musicians offering an alternative solution of the Quaerendo invenietis canon in track 17. As we should remember, Bach didn’t write out the “solutions” to all these canons, but instead chose to intellectually tease the King. The liner notes do a good job at providing the historical context for the composition of this Offering and as much as I know about the piece, it was an engaging read.
The album ends with the performance of the likely favorite component of the Offering, a trio sonata tailored to the King’s taste. I found it interesting that the booklet’s comments question the King’s ability to play the faster movements on the flute. While a flute player, coached by his steady servant Quantz, this was the first I’d recalled mention of the King’s actual ability to play. Given the politics of the time, it wouldn’t surprise me for Bach to write something just beyond his grasp.
It’s no surprise that these musicians do an excellent job at the interpretation of the Bach: I’ve always found their playing first-rate. Jan de Winne’s flute timbre is nice, playing an instrument of his own manufacture, copied after whom else, Quantz! There are a few places where the instrumental balance favors the strings and harpsichord over the flute.
The HIPP movement is a complex entity: respecting the past while engaging a living audience. NeoBarock are attempting their own way to help us appreciate music of the past through their programming. In this case, including more contemporary pieces that have a musical tie in with Bach’s Musical Offering makes for a creative concert program. That said, a concert is a one-time experience. An equivalent approach was Ensemble Caprice’s decision to combine arrangements of Shostakovich’s preludes and fugues for baroque orchestra in their performance of the Brandenburg Concertos. I let myself hear things the way they wanted me to, Shostakovich facing Bach. In this recording, I did the same thing with the music of Isang Yun and Viktor Kalabis. Now that the experiment is over? I’ll program these out the next time I audition this album just as I did the Shostakovich with the Canadian’s album.
That all said–this wouldn’t be my favorite recording of Bach’s BWV 1079. It’s good, and nicely captured, but in a crowded space, there are to be found performances that either tickle us with their tempi or other attempts at inventiveness, such as the instrumentarium employed in the Virgin Veritas release by Ensemble Sonnerie.
Props to Passacaille on a beautiful cover, articulating the Bach "seal" in three dimensions.
