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Reviewer: Jerry
Dubins In Fanfare 37:4, Manfred Huss earned a strong recommendation from me for a Handel Water Music which I judged “superbly and imaginative played and beautifully recorded.” That performance was with the same Vienna Haydn Sinfonietta heard here. Readers are no doubt familiar with the music of the two Bach brothers on this disc, perhaps even with these very works, since they’ve all been recorded before. The elder brother, Carl Philipp Emanuel (1714–1788), was still close enough in time and musical disposition to his father, J. S. Bach, that his works seem as often drawn back to earlier Baroque manners and affects as they are tugged forward towards the emerging Classical style. The younger brother, Johann Christian (1735–1782), though outlived by his elder sibling, was very much a child of the burgeoning Classical period. The trajectory of his career, however, was brilliant but short-lived, and had J. S. lived to witness his youngest son’s sullying of the family name, he may well have disowned him. The young Bach traveled to Italy, where he traded in his father’s devotion to sacred music, the learned style, and the Lutheran faith for Italian opera and Catholicism. Then it was off to London, where he produced at least three of his own operas at the King’s Theatre, and married one of his leading ladies, Italian soprano Cecilia Grassi. J. C. Bach’s sun rose and set within less than 20 years, roughly between 1761 and the late 1770s. It’s said, though, that his keyboard style, and especially his many keyboard concertos, made a strong impression on Mozart. Turning to the Concerto in F Major for Two Harpsichords by the elder brother, Carl Philipp Emanuel, let me make absolutely clear that my objection to this performance is not related to the players’ technical execution, which is excellent, or to the Haydn Sinfonietta’s contribution, which continues to impress with some of the best period instrument playing I’ve heard. Rather, my issue is with the unusual and, in my opinion, ill-advised choice of modern copies of circa 1780s fortepianos in place of harpsichords as the solo keyboard instruments. First off, Bach was clear and specific in designating his intentions and careful in distinguishing between which keyboards were to be used in his works. This double concerto, Wq 46, calls for two harpsichords. The very next catalog entry in Wq order, Wq 47, also a double concerto, calls for pianoforte and harpsichord. In other words, it’s not as if any keyboard instrument would do. Second, out of the nine previous recordings of Wq 46 listed by ArkivMusic, eight of them present the concerto on two harpsichords, as called for, and the one that doesn’t is a modern instrument version performed on pianos. Moreover, the eight period instrument versions that do use harpsichords feature deans of the movement, such as Andreas Staier, Robert Hill, Ton Koopman, Gustav Leonhardt, and Alan Curtis, all of whom seem to take Bach’s “two harpsichords” designation seriously and to respect his wishes. Third, the decision to use two fortepianos for this performance might not have been as awful as it is if the instruments chosen didn’t sound like salvages from an abandoned amusement park penny arcade. It would be funny if there weren’t something darkly disturbing about it. One or the other of the two fortepianos, by the way, is used for the continuo in the remaining works on the disc. The flute in C. P. E. Bach’s A-Minor Flute Concerto is not identified, other than by the inference that Reinhard Czasch took his diploma in and has taught transverse flute. So, at least we’re not treated to a regressive performance on recorder. The concerto is unquestionably a work from Bach’s top drawer, and Czasch, though slightly softer and mellower-toned than Patrick Gallois in his two-disc Naxos set of Bach’s flute concertos with Kevin Mallon conducting the Toronto Camerata, is better, I think, at delineating those sudden stops and wrenching changes of musical direction that characterize Bach’s empfindsamer Stil, of which the composer was one of the leading representatives. Both sets of C. P. E. Bach’s “Hamburg” Symphonies are fairly well-represented on record. The first set dates from 1773, five years after the composer’s move to Hamburg. That set, Wq 182, contains six symphonies (or sinfonias) for strings only, and was commissioned by Baron Gottfried von Swieten, who was later to be an important patron of Beethoven. The second set, which we’re dealing with here, Wq 183, was composed in 1775–76 at the behest of an anonymous patron, and it contains only four symphonies (or sinfonias), but this time for 12 obbligato parts plus violon—I’ll get to that last one in a moment. But first, I’m looking at the C. F. Peters score, which reproduces the foreword page listing Bach’s instrumentation: two horns, two flutes, two oboes, two violins, viola, cello, bassoon, and Flügel (harpsichord or fortepiano). That makes 12. The “and Violon” appended at the end is confusing. Does it designate a double bass, which would simply have bolstered the continuo part and therefore not to be counted as a 13th instrument? Or, is there no continuo part, and “Violon” indicates multiple violins, a kind of ripieno, if you will, that supply body weight and mass to the ensemble? Based on the printed score, the answer is the former, for the bottom staff on the page is marked “Cembalo e Violone.” In other words, there is a continuo and it consists of a keyboard instrument and a double bass. Based on this performance, however, I can tell you that conductor Huss gives the two “Hamburg” symphonies on the disc the full orchestral treatment. According to the Haydn Sinfonietta’s personnel roster, printed in the enclosed booklet, in addition to the Noah’s Ark pairs of woodwinds and horns, the string sections are made up of seven first violins (led by Simon Standage), six seconds, three violas, three cellos, and two double basses, and for most of the time it sounds like they’re all playing. Thankfully, these are not one-to-a-part performances—far from it—but I honestly don’t know what Bach intended. Obviously, when he said 12 obbligato parts, he was counting each of the woodwind and horn parts individually, but when it came to the two violins, viola, and cello, was the assumption that each counted only as one, no matter how many players there were per part, because all the first violins were playing the same part, all the second violins were playing the same part, and so on? I suspect that was the case, because that’s our understanding of an orchestra today; all five or six desks of first violins are considered one voice because they’re all playing the same part. But what is confusing about Bach’s listing of instruments is his use of the word “obbligato,” which we tend to think of today as an indispensable part for a solo instrument playing within an orchestral work, for example, the obbligato violin part in Saint-Saëns’s Danse macabre. In fact, however, the term has been used in multiple contexts and has had multiple meanings, some contradictory, from the 17th century onward (see the Wikipedia entry under “Obbligato”), so I’m not sure we can know for sure exactly what Bach intended. That Wikipedia article, incidentally, cites these very “Hamburg” Symphonies by way of example, stating, “Obbligato includes the idea of independence, as in C. P. E. Bach’s 1780 Symphonies [that’s when they were published, not written—LD] ‘mit zwölf obligaten Stimmen’ by which Bach was referring to the independent woodwind parts he was using for the first time. These parts were also obbligato in the sense of indispensable.” That’s all well and good, but why then specifically include “two violins, viola, and cello” in the obbligato group? I apologize for this lengthy digression; it’s just that this strikes me as a bit of a mystery, and I find it fascinating. Perhaps we can hold a séance and put the question to Bach himself. Whatever the answer is, I’d just like to reiterate that Manfred Huss’s Vienna Haydn Sinfonietta is fantastic. The playing is ebullient, energetic, spirited, and filled with rhythmic verve and vitality. Additionally, execution is so polished and the orchestra’s tone so richly textured, you’d never know you were listening to period instruments. Not for those, then who like to rough it. Concluding the disc is Johann Christian Bach’s Symphony in E♭ Major for Double Orchestra, which, like C. P. E. Bach’s “Hamburg” Symphonies, calls for a full complement of instruments. But J. C. takes things a step further, dividing his strings into two antiphonal groups seated left and right. The horns and oboes are assigned to one group of strings, the flutes and bassoon to the other. The idea is hardly a new one; such musical interplay between echoing groups is evident as far back as the late 1500s in the polychoral works of Gabrieli and others, and in turn, it laid the foundations for the Baroque concerto grosso. What is new in J. C.’s Symphony is the style. Gone are the neurotic ticks of C. P. E.’s empfindsamer Stil, and in their place is the elegant, Italianate vocal lyricism characteristic of the galante style we recognize in the music of Sammartini, Pergolesi, Cimarosa, Paisiello, and early Mozart. Once again, Manfred Huss and the Vienna Haydn Sinfonietta simply dazzle. I would give this release the highest recommendation possible, but I’m going to knock it down a notch or two for the misguided decision to use fortepianos—and pretty dreadful sounding ones at that—for C. P. E. Bach’s Double Harpsichord Concerto.
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