Word: bache
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Concert programming is an impossible task. It can ruin a good ensemble; and no matter how it is done, it will always offend some listeners. After two Bach Society performances this season, though, I am convinced this group could play anything well. Couple the basic ability of the orchestra with an energetic, sensitive, and brilliant leader--Nils Vigeland--and the result is the kind of exciting performance that delighted several hundreds last Saturday night at Sanders...
...play like the BSO" were Vigeland's instructions to his orchestra before the program. And they did not. Where a certain other Boston ensemble played through Stravnisky last week as though they hated every minute of it, the Bach Society was alive with enthusiasm for Pulcinella. The piece represents the beginning of twentieth-century musical neoclassicism. Borrowing from Pergolesi, Stravinsky fools with the theme throughout, always setting off the expected (as implied by classical harmonies) against his own turn of phrase...
...Telefunken recordings (SA WT 9059-10) of the J.S. Bach orchestral suites are a superb example of how musicological scholarship has radically transformed performance. Played by the Concentus Musicus of Vienna, the suites are led by Nikolaus Harnoncourt, an excellent viola da gambist and brilliant musicologist...
...finale of the Second Suite, a Badinerie, is described as a "ready-composed encore" by Harnoncourt. The bounce in the string accompaniment is infectious. All of Bach's brilliant counterpoint shine through because of the bright string sound. No wonder, then, that the Concentus Musicus used the Badinerie for their encore in last fall's Sanders Theatre concert...
...never convince everybody. Many listeners cannot adapt to an orchestral sound not of the nineteenth century, no matter what the composition being played. It is for these people, the majority of the buying public (and of practicing professional musicians, for that matter) to whom the Argo release of the Bach orchestral suites is aimed. Neville Marriner leads the excellent Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields through their well-rehearsed paces...