Writing about music isn’t easy because music is a form of expression that is basically independent of words. But let’s not put musicologists and critics out of business. Or bloggers. So here goes, starting with the freshest impressions.
The last forty-eight hours
Fitting the time slot lasting till midnight on Day Two of the Bachfest, Spark – The Classical Band took us „Closer to Paradise.“ The program arched from Bach’s Sheep May Safely Graze to Rammstein’s Seemann – bucolic utopia and yearning for death – and eleven other composers with heavenly visions, illusory paradises, dreams and devotion.
The thing about Spark is, yes, they play the right notes, but do so with such abandon, adapting and improvising and enhancing, that the audience has to jump to their feet and cheer. The mood is closer to that at a rock concert. Departing St. Thomas’ Church, the last song and the refrains delivered by countertenor Valer Sabadus reverberated in the cranial space.
Sometimes words and music go together. Sometimes not. Sometimes one influences the other. Extract the Christian story from Bach’s St. John Passion, and you can get something familiar, yet startlingly different. Performed at the Paul Gerhardt Church, The Queer Passion has the music by Bach and the words by Thomas Höft. All the love, betrayal, politics, brutality and mass hysteria we know from the passion of Christ, but telling the stories of LGBTQI+ people who have been persecuted down through the ages.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more passionate passion. Maybe it’s because this is a subject we feel closer to and in language as it’s spoken today. Soloists Markus Schäfer, Susanne Elmark, Yosemeh Adjei, Julian Habermann and Dietrich Henschel sang and interacted. Two choirs and the Art House 17 ensemble led by Michael Hell performed with high drama and emphasis, but it’s the quiet moments that bring tears to the eyes.
Silence = Death could have been the subtitle. From the eighteenth century to the massacre at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando and the ongoing experience of sexual minorities in Chechnya and Lagos, stories about abuses often perpetrated in the name of Christianity, reminding that „Queer people are still in danger.“
The effect: While transforming the piece, the Queer Passion paradoxically casts a stark light on the original. Transformation being the motto of this year’s Bachfest, the last performance on Day One was closer to the original – Bach’s Art of the Fugue – but performed not on a keyboard, but by a string quartet. Nadja Zwiener, Anna Dmitrieva, Magdalena Schenk-Bader and Anna Reisener played on instruments from 1729 and 1742 owned by the Thomaskirche. The performance was … unfathomable? Soaringly beautiful? Transcendental? The Art of the Fugue is a work where words and music part ways entirely.
Bach to the beginning
A buzz of excitement in St. Thomas’ Church is extinguished by four imperious notes sounding out from the organ: B, A, C and H (German musical notation). Thomaskirche organist Johannes Lang launches into Franz Liszt’s Prelude and Fugue on the name B-A-C-H. Amazing: Liszt repeats and interweaves the not very catchy four-note theme a nearly ridiculous number of times, ramming it into the ground and taking it to the lofty heights. Over the top. Seriously? Say what you will, this piece certainly shows what an organ – and an organist – can do.
Festival director Michael Maul addresses the audience, indicating what’s ahead in the coming eleven days and over 200 events for what he calls „the world’s largest Bach self-help group.“ His and the Leipzig mayor’s words sandwiched between musical selections concluding with the Kyrie and Gloria from the B Minor Mass. As is tradition, the opening featuring the aforementioned organist, members of the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig and the St. Thomas Boy Choir in their sailor suits.
Looking around, I’m reminded of something about this festival I’ve noticed before: I can’t think of any other venue of serious music where you see so many smiling faces.
So those are Rick’s picks of the day. A subjective choice. That’s the point I guess.