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EARLY MUSIC REVIEW
Warren Stewart December 3, 2006
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Lübeck’s Hidden Treasure By Joseph Sargent
The holiday musical season is officially upon us, and amid the inevitable array of multicultural carols and folksongs one can sometimes find hidden treasures that are little known, little performed, or both. The early Baroque ensemble Magnificat, under the artistic direction of Warren Stewart, offered just such a find on Sunday at San Francisco’s St. Gregory Nyssen Episcopal Church, with a program of Advent and Christmas cantatas by Dietrich Buxtehude.
Buxtehude — more familiar to audiences for his organ music — has a distinguished output of sacred vocal music that reveals a composer of great invention who could deploy a stunning variety of textures and styles over the span of just a few minutes of music. Magnificat proved up to the task of negotiating these shifts, delivering a sparkling performance that further established their Bay Area reputation as a leading interpreter of 17th century repertory.
Working in the German city of Lübeck for the last 40 years of his life, Buxtehude was intimately involved in the organization and direction of that city’s Abendmusik, an annual series of concerts during the Advent season. Although the repertory on Magnificat’s program cannot be definitively linked to these concerts, the works all address the common subject of Jesus’ birth, drawing on varied textual sources, from Lutheran chorales to Biblical scripture. These pieces share many stylistic commonalities as well — instrumental preludes which establish the mood of the text to come, formal structures alternating between sung poetic stanzas and instrumental interludes, and similar overall durations.
Given the repertory’s many uniformities, the concert became less about Buxtehude himself and more of a showcase for three of Magnificat’s vocalists, sopranos Catherine Webster and Jennifer Ellis and bass Peter Becker. All three acquitted themselves splendidly, performing with uniform agility and sensitivity to the wide-ranging texts.
The contrasts between the two sopranos’ vocal qualities were especially intriguing. Webster has the brighter tone and more penetrating vibrato, qualities she displayed to fine effect in Also hat Gott die Welt geliebet (For God so loved the world), a gently flowing setting of this well-known scriptural text. Throughout this piece, Webster sung with great presence and flair, lacking only a more precise sense of the German diction. Ellis boasts crystalline purity of sound and a gentle vibrato that is well-suited to this repertory. Her performance of the program’s opening cantata, Fallax mundus (False world), took great advantage of its many stylistic shifts, from the earnest “Cor, exsurge, vectem solve” (Heart, arise and break your bonds), to the rapidly flowing figurations on water themed words such as “spring” and “rivers.” Despite a slight tendency toward sharpness, Ellis’s naturalistic physical gestures and sensitive rendering of the text imbued the music with great affective power. Becker was a real standout, his voice marvelously rich and supple throughout his range. He made a powerful impression in Mein Herz ist bereit (My heart is ready), with confident entrances and careful attention to diction. Becker’s lustrous tone lost none of its heft in the lower register, and his commanding presence and subtly dramatic presentation made this particular piece a clear audience favorite.
The three vocalists blended seamlessly in various duet and trio combinations, matching each other’s expressive gestures both vocally and physically. Clearly they have sung often together, for such ease and comfort comes only with experience. The graceful homophonic passages of In dulci jubilo (In sweet jubilation) were indeed exquisitely sweet, if at times sung too softly relative to the instrumental consort. Webster and Ellis showed pitch-perfect coordination in Nun freut euch ihr Frommen (Rejoice now, ye faithful), while Becker demonstrated appealing tenderness in Fürchtet euch nicht (Fear ye not), matching Ellis’ lithe quality in the many textual moments of gentle celebration. The instrumentalists provided estimable accompaniment throughout the concert and shone brightly in their two spotlight moments, sonatas by Buxtehude in D minor and C major. Violinists Rob Diggins and David Wilson had widely divergent tone qualities — Diggins on the bright side, Wilson considerably more mellow — yet blended well together. Diggins performed his many solo lines with infectious enthusiasm and polish, save for the occasional moment of blurriness. Gamba player John Dornenburg added dexterous figurations at several points in the program, while violoncellist Stewart, organist Katherine Heater, and inadvertently uncredited theorbist David Tayler ably dispatched their duties. Mention should be made of some carelessness in preparing the concert’s program. A series of egregious errors — numerous typos, an incomplete English translation, and the omission of Tayler’s name from the artist roster — betrayed a sloppiness that contrasted starkly with the consummate elegance of the performance itself. (Joseph Sargent, a doctoral candidate in musicology at Stanford University, is a professional writer and editor as well as a performer, conductor, and scholar of early music.) ©2006 Joseph Sargent, all rights reserved |
Jennifer Ellis
