The ability of occasion and setting to enhance the power of a musical experience has been demonstrated many times, seldom more clearly, for many New Yorkers, than on Sept. 11, 2011. For the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Trinity Wall Street presented a solid day of concerts alternating between Trinity Church and St. Paul's Chapel, several blocks to the north.
The historic chapel proved an especially poignant setting. Though directly across the street from the site of the former World Trade Center, it somehow escaped major damage in the conflagration (apart from layers of possibly lethal dust and grime) to become a haven and staging area for rescue workers.
It was an altogether more modest affair on Thursday, the 13th anniversary, when the 4x4 Baroque Music Festival, formerly presented at St. Peter's Church on Lexington Avenue at 54th Street, opened its annual weekend of four concerts at St. Paul's with a program called 'The Grand Overture.' Sixteen players, including Avi Stein, the festival's director and keyboardist, leading from the harpsichord, offered vibrant performances of orchestral suites by Georg Philipp Telemann, Johann Friedrich Fasch and Bach.
Telemann and Fasch were both German contemporaries of Bach, and both withdrew their candidacies to become cantor at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig in 1722, the position Bach took over in 1723 and held until his death in 1750. Each was somewhat more forward looking than Bach in his instrumental works.
Telemann's Suite in B flat (TWV 55:B10), in nine movements, includes character pieces, notably a battle piece, 'Combattans.' The six movements of Fasch's Suite in G minor (FWV K:g5) include three arias, symptomatic, perhaps, of a waning interest in counterpoint.
It is a nice idea, if you want to perform a great work by Bach (and who doesn't?), to give it context, to surround it with other, almost inevitably lesser works in the same genre. But if genres were not hard and fast in the Baroque era, still less were the makeups of the orchestras and the numbers and balances of the performing forces.
More germane was a spirit of compromise, with instrumental complements shaped as much by practical and economical concerns as by artistic ideals. In keeping with that spirit, the Bach suite was performed here without the trumpets and timpani that add so much to its ebullient mood.
No matter, Bach's woodwinds carried the day once the performance sorted itself out after a confused opening. Those woodwinds were crucial in the other works as well.
The three oboes (excellently and tirelessly played by Gonzalo Ruiz, Kathryn Montoya and Priscilla Herreid) determined the essential color of the Telemann. And the bassoon (Dominic Teresi, also stellar) contributed solos to two of those arias in the Fasch, one almost comically dolorous, the other lively.
It was a lovely evening of music and forgivably escapist on a day of so many dark thoughts elsewhere.
Entities 0 Name: Bach Count: 7 1 Name: Telemann Count: 3 2 Name: St. Paul Count: 2 3 Name: Fasch Count: 2 4 Name: Dominic Teresi Count: 1 5 Name: Kathryn Montoya Count: 1 6 Name: Avi Stein Count: 1 7 Name: Leipzig Count: 1 8 Name: Trinity Church Count: 1 9 Name: St. Thomas Church Count: 1 10 Name: St. Peter 's Church Count: 1 11 Name: Georg Philipp Telemann Count: 1 12 Name: World Trade Center Count: 1 13 Name: Lexington Avenue Count: 1 14 Name: Priscilla Herreid Count: 1 15 Name: Trinity Wall Street Count: 1 16 Name: Gonzalo Ruiz Count: 1 17 Name: Johann Friedrich Fasch Count: 1 18 Name: Fall Arts Preview Count: 1 Related Keywords 0 Name: bach Score: 53 1 Name: telemann Score: 40 2 Name: fasch Score: 40 3 Name: woodwinds Score: 20 4 Name: suite Score: 18 5 Name: baroque Score: 17 6 Name: performance Score: 16 7 Name: arias Score: 16 8 Name: trinity Score: 15 9 Name: chapel Score: 14 authors 0 Name: JAMES R. OESTREICH Url: http://ift.tt/1r114Ql Media Images 0
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