Telemann, C.P.E. Bach, and J.S. Bach: Masaaki Suzuki, cond., Ying Huang, soprano, Seattle Symphony, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 11.5.2007 (BJ)

 

Orchestrally, everything went brilliantly in this Seattle Symphony program of works by Bach, his son Emanuel, and his friend Telemann. Masaaki Suzuki is one of those rare specialists in music of the baroque period whose judgement in matters of phrasing, articulation, tone, texture, and even tempo seems to be infallible. It is above all in the sphere of tempo that such infallibility is the most unusual. Even such gifted colleagues as René Jacobs and Marc Minkowski occasionally have me raising an eyebrow at their choice of (usually fast) tempo, though their talents are such that they generally have me convinced by the time the movement in question is over. But with Suzuki every movement always seems to go at the most natural speed possible, so that I don’t even find myself thinking about its obvious rightness. (If you want to check out a superb manifestation of his quality, try his two-CD set of Handel’s Messiah on the BIS label. Recorded ten years ago, it still stands, even for me who grew up in Messiah-land, as the finest performance of that much mistreated work I have ever heard.)

For this concert, Suzuki had put together a program with an agreeably light touch, especially at the start. Telemann’s Overture in D major and Tragicomedia Suite is a charming example of its composer’s refreshing freedom from solemnity, presenting as it does pithy portraits of such worthies as “the gout-sufferer” and “the hypochondriac.” Without cheapening the style, Suzuki caught exactly the right tone of witty irreverence, and by virtue of severely restricting the use of vibrato, he managed to draw from the orchestra’s modern string instruments a sonority sufficiently akin to what 18th-century listeners would have expected to hear.

This spirited opening was followed by two Sinfonias by C.P.E. Bach, and then after intermission it was the turn of Johann Sebastian, who was represented by the “Wedding Cantata,” No. 210, “O holder Tag, erwünschte Zeit” and the Fourth Orchestral Suite. I was particularly pleased by the latter choice, because, though it lacks an obvious crowd-pleaser like the famous Air in the Third Suite, I think it is the stronger and more characterful work of the two. Perhaps because the program was already set to run well over the two-hour mark, Suzuki omitted a couple of repeats, but here again the orchestra sounded just right, with a telling contribution from the bassoon and stellar work from the trumpet section.

The playing was fine in the cantata too, Shannon Spicciati and Judy Kriewall supplying virtuoso obbligato work on oboe d’amore and flute in the arias. This would have been another highly enjoyable performance if it had not been for soprano Ying Huang’s evident discomfort with Bach’s taxing solo part. She sang bravely, but it sounded like the courage of desperation. Tone and line were sadly lacking in consistency and firmness, while intonation was often approximate. This was certainly not singing of the standard I have come to associate with Suzuki collaborations in the past.

I have left the Emanuel Bach pieces for last. The performances, certainly, made the best possible case for them. But this, despite his strength of personality and fearless originality of style and invention, is a composer I have never been able to warm to. Basil Lam once nicely described C.P.E. Bach’s paradoxes as “the too-easy surprises of a style where anything may happen.” Mozart, the program note informed us, called Emanuel Bach “the father of us all”–but Mozart’s own work, fortunately, reveals much more the smoother, altogether more benign, influence of Emanuel’s brother Johann Christian than that of Emanuel’s curiously spiky inspirations.

Nevertheless, it is always illuminating to hear the creations of less “perfect” composers alongside those of the undisputed masters, not least because they help to show just why the mastery of the latter is undisputed. Emanuel Bach’s music is not bad music in the way that the music of, say, a creative pygmy like his much younger compatriot Franz Danzi is bad–he has far too much character for that. But in this context, even under Suzuki’s unerring hand, Emanuel’s presence served mainly to illuminate the sheer brilliance of his father’s muse, and also, I might add, the attractiveness of Telemann’s more modest, far less heaven-storming lightness of heart.

 

Bernard Jacobson