Bach Collection
Program Notes by Jennifer Gersten
The pianist Simone Dinnerstein, a much-beloved Miller Theatre artistic partner, returns for the 2023-24 season with the first of three programs delving into that endlessly renewable artistic resource: the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
For Dinnerstein, programming Bach performances is as much a matter of music as it is of personnel. In each of her Miller performances this spring, she has crafted programs that highlight the members of Baroklyn, a group of hand-picked chamber players that Dinnerstein leads. The first work in tonight’s performance, the Trio Sonata No. 5 in C major, BWV 529 (originally for organ, but which can be played by different instrumental configurations), was chosen to showcase Peggy Pearson, a Boston-based oboist with whose playing Dinnerstein fell in love after listening to a recording of Pearson performing Bach’s church cantata “Ich habe genug.” Pearson will also be featured in the cantata “Vergnügte Ruh’, beliebte Seelenlust,” for alto singer (here, mezzo-soprano), strings, and oboe d’amore. Also showcased on the program is violinist Rebecca Fischer, Baroklyn’s concertmaster, whom Dinnerstein met while they were both fellows at Tanglewood Music Center.
In between will be Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 6, the last of a beloved series of chamber works that Bach bestowed upon Christian Ludwig, the Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt, a region in the northeastern lowlands of Germany, in 1721. Dinnerstein discovered the work in a theory class while an undergraduate at Juilliard, where she became entranced by the work’s unusual instrumentation: Bach replaced the violins with two violas, which accounts for its darker sound. Dinnerstein originally planned to conduct the work without playing on account of her dissatisfaction with the first movement’s continuo part, which she felt was overly rigid and square. “It’s like Bach wanted a rhythm section, so he was 200 years ahead of his time,” she says.
With her friend, the composer Philip Lasser—whose own work will feature in the third concert of this series—Dinnerstein began considering interventions. Lasser, they decided, would write new continuo parts that would best serve Dinnerstein’s own style and her instrument, the modern piano, given that the original works employed harpsichord. Their plans entailed some trial and error: “I went through a crazy 24-hour period when I thought we should add a tabla” to the sixth Brandenburg, she recalls. “I thought it might add a completely different rhythm which would prevent any type of squareness from dominating the meter of the first movement.” Lasser was supportive. “But, in the end, I thought that, if I can’t make the music work as Bach wrote it, then that’s a failure on my own part.”
“I have composed the continuo parts to these works by J.S. Bach specifically for Simone Dinnerstein with a sensitivity to her varied and profound interpretation of Bach at the Piano.”
Trio Sonata No. 5 in C major, BWV 529
The work above, which will today be performed as a duet, began life as the penultimate work of Bach’s six trio sonatas for a single organist, composed between 1727 and 1730. As with the six sonatas and partitas for violin, Bach conceived these virtuosic and demanding pieces with some pedagogical intent, weaving throughout styles and techniques required to declare oneself—specifically his oldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, the work’s dedicatee—proficient at the organ; as with the aforementioned violin works, such beneficent thinking went on to yield some of the instrument’s crown jewels.
These works take the form of the trio sonata, the Baroque era’s most popular compositional style. Contrary to what the name suggests, a trio sonata does not denote the presence of three players; the name refers rather to the presence of three contrapuntal lines, typically two primary lines and one bass line. Bach’s use of a single organ for these sonatas is considered a genre unto itself: each of the three lines is of more or less equal stature, as though the musician had swallowed three other chamber partners. Yet these sonatas are also readily adaptable for other configurations of players, such as the two at work today.
Each of the sonatas comprises three movements, a slow movement sandwiched between two that are more upbeat. BWV 529 opens with a perky Allegro, followed by the stately Largo, and concludes with another Allegro, an intricate fugue. In the second and third movements, Bach seems to tip his hat to the influential Italian composer Archangelo Corelli with a number of reminiscent themes.
Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 in B-flat major, BWV 1051
Bach’s six Brandenburg Concertos are among the most cherished concerti of the Baroque era. Named after their dedicatee Christian Ludwig, the Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt, a region in the northeastern lowlands of Germany, the concerti each feature a unique instrumentation, as well as ample opportunities for soloists to flex. Why Bach waited so long, after meeting the Margrave two years prior, to send him his scores (perhaps as a sort of musical resume, the thinking goes), and whether the Margrave ever had the works performed—or even acknowledged their receipt—has yet to be sorted out. The concerti were ultimately to remain dormant until their rediscovery and publication in the mid-19th century, though they are now such a fixture of the classical repertoire that we need not bother with condolences.
The sixth concerto is unique in the set for Bach’s bold decision to omit violins, the usual solo-bearers, and include two “viole de bracchio,” which became the modern-day viola, in their stead. Per the Austrian conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, this choice was nothing short of a “revolution” that gave violas, the “proletarian among instruments” usually consigned to middle or textural roles, a rare spin in the limelight, and the work overall its signature dark timbre. Rounding out this small yet spunky band are two viole de gamba, generally a solo instrument as well, but which, in this social switcheroo, serve as accompaniment; cello; and continuo. As Bach himself loved the viola, and his then-employer at the Cöthen court the gamba, a theoretical performance would have entailed the duke playing backup to his employee—the cheek on him.
While the violas feature prominently throughout the energetic first movement (which lacks a tempo indication, though is generally performed allegro), in the second movement, with the gambas off duty, they share solos with the cello in a trio-like formation with continuo accompaniment. The delights of the third movement, in the form of a gigue, include the violists avidly swapping a quick-footed phrase as the work gets going.
“The traditional sound of the harpsichord in these works, I feel would not translate well to the piano so rather than just writing continuo parts in the Baroque style, I reimagined what Bach might have done at the keyboard of a modern piano.”
Sonata No. 4 in C minor for violin and keyboard, BWV 1017
As with the sixth Brandenburg, Bach’s six sonatas for violin and harpsichord instigate another reordering of the universe: the harpsichord is elevated here to a position often equaling the violin, a move that foreshadows the development of the modern duo sonata that highlights both players equally. Believed to have been composed during his tenure as Cöthen’s Kapellmeister, the sonatas were to draw Bach back to his workbench for the next many years until his death in 1750. Notably, Bach elected to fully write out the harpsichord parts for these sonatas instead of leaving them as figured bass for the performer to determine on their own.
Each of the sonatas in the set takes the form of the trio sonata, meaning three lines of counterpoint—the violin’s primary, and the harpsichord/piano’s primary right hand and secondary left hand. All have four movements per the Italian sonata da chiesa (“church sonata”): the first slow, the next fast, another slow, a final fast. The C minor, the fourth in the set, begins with a somber first movement, the Largo, which is written as a Siciliana, a graceful dance form associated with pastoral life. In the more forward-feeling second, Bach crafts an intensive discourse between the instruments, what the harpsichordist John Butt characterized as “one of the most intensive fugal movements” the composer ever wrote from “a mammoth compendium of musical ideas.” In the third movement, Adagio, there is a touch of brightness with the transition to E-flat major and the violinist situated mainly on the two lower strings for a warmer timbre. The final movement, Allegro, is a showcase of Bach’s unparalleled acumen for writing fugues, featuring motives that recall the first movement of Brandenburg No. 3.
Cantata Vergnügte Ruh’, beliebte Seelenlust, BWV 170
In 1723, Bach arrived in the German city of Leipzig to begin his role as Thomaskantor (Cantor at St. Thomas), the musical director of St. Thomas’s Church. Considered among the most prestigious and visible roles in Protestant Germany, the cantorship entailed directing the church’s boys’ choir and being principal of the choir school, as well as teaching a certain number of hours of Latin and music lessons. Far better that he occupy himself with his preferred task, which included composing cantatas, works for voice and instrumental accompaniment, for Sunday services and other church holidays.
Written for alto male singer and ensemble of oboe d’amore, violins, viola, organ, and basso continuo, “Vergnügte Ruh,” as well as other cantatas by the composer, draws its libretto from Gottgefälliges Kirchen-Opfer… (the start of a rather more prolix title about divine reflections), published in 1711 by the German writer and Darmstadt court librarian Georg Christian Lehms. The cantata’s title, which is also that of the capacious first movement, translates to “Delightful rest, beloved pleasure of the soul,” expressing the speaker’s aspirations towards peace with God and desire to be free from sin and sinners. Throughout the work lie clever harmonic counterparts for Lehms’ text, as in the second aria “Wie jammern mich doch die verkehrten Herzen” (“How the perverted hearts afflict me”)—notably without continuo, which, as many researchers have proposed, was Bach’s way of implying that the speaker is attempting to transcend earthly attachments. After another short recitative, “Wer sollte sich demnach wohl hier zu leben wünschen” (“Who should hereafter wish, indeed, to live here”) comes the final movement, “Mir ekelt mehr zu leben” (“I feel revulsion to prolong my life”), in which the singer freely shares his contempt towards life amongst the sinful, and implores Jesus to rescue him imminently; the musicians accompanying him in an upbeat setting seem somewhat better adjusted to earthly society.
Jennifer Gersten is a violinist and writer from Queens, New York. Her reporting, essays, and criticism appear in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Bloomberg, and many other publications.