Spirit Triumphant - Carmel Bach Festival 2010

July 18th, 2010

Article By IPA Member: Lynwood F Bronson
Penninsula Reviews

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The 73rd season of the Carmel Bach Festival, in which we bid farewell to Music Director/Conductor Bruno Weil and Concertmaster Elizabeth Wallfisch, began last night with a triumphant concert at Sunset Center. This opening concert served to remind us how much the Festival has changed in the 19 years since Bruno Weil came on board. In his last years, Sandor Salgo’s music making was as solid as ever, but tempos began to slow down and become more careful, even to the point of borderline tedium. Programs were devout and serious, and we sometimes felt as though we were trapped in overly long devotional services.

With Bruno all that changed. A new fleetness and lightness developed in rehearsals and performances. Additionally Bruno brought in concert master Libby Wallfisch who stimulated a new interest (whether we were ready for it or not) in period instruments and historically informed performance. Additionally the presence of the piano (a solo recital and concerto performance had been a popular staple of the festival since early days) was banished from the festival for 17 years. However, programming began to broaden in other directions, and we began to hear ever increasing doses of Haydn, a composer for whom Weill had a special affinity ¯ plus some 19th and 20th century composers, representing a trend that took the Festival in new directions undreamed of by previous Bach Festival boards.

Not unexpectedly, last night’s opening performance continued the departure from Sandor Salgo’s era, when opening night programs were usually all-Bach fare consisting of two or three Cantatas, some arias and recitatives, and perhaps, as a closer, one of the Brandenburg Concerti. Although last night’s opening concert did include two Bach Cantatas, it also featured Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, Brahms’ Alto Rhapsody and an extraordinary performance of Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy.

Pianist David Breitman has demonstrated in previous festivals that he is equally at home playing period instruments or contemporary Steinways. Although Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy was composed in 1808, almost 80 years before the modern piano reached its final stage of development, Breitman chose to perform last night on a Hamburg Steinway concert grand ¯ the obvious, logical choice, since a period instrument approximating those available to Beethoven in 1808 would not be as effective against orchestra, soloists and chorus today.

Breitman chose to treat the opening pages of the Fantasy, in which the orchestra and chorus are tacit, as an improvisation. Instead of the more metronomic steadiness we often hear in the beginning, Breitman projected a freedom of expression and flexible tempos that truly made it sound like an improvisation. He demonstrated a fine mastery of the work’s technical demands, and he achieved a lovely variety of sounds in the more lyrical sections. In the final pages, Weil pulled the orchestra along to an amazingly fast tempo that really got the pulses racing. Breitman raced along with him and achieved a fantastically effective climax, which brought the audience to its feet in a wild spontaneous frenzy of applause and bravos.

Preceding the Beethoven Choral Fantasy we heard mezzo Sally-Anne Russell in a deeply moving performance of Brahms’ Alto Rhapsody in which she injected long legato lines with expressive intensity and lovely dramatic color. She exhibits a striking presence on stage that matches the authority of her performance.

We also heard two Cantatas during the evening’s program, BWV 130 (Herr Gott, dich loben alle wir) and BWV 19 (Es, erhub sich ein Streit). To hear the Festival Chorale, Festival Chorus, Youth Chorus and Orchestra in the Cantatas and in the Choral Fantasy, one has to appreciate how much effort and rehearsal time is needed to achieve the fine results we heard last night, and much credit is deserved by Associate Conductor Andrew Megill and Chorusmaster John Koza.

Some fine soloists contributed to the success of last night’s program ¯ soprano Kendra Colton, mezzo Sally-Anne Russell, tenors Alan Bennett & Thomas Cooley, and baritones Sanford Sylvan and David Newman.

The most contemporary work on the program was Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings. This iconic work has become deeply established in the public consciousness and it tends to have powerful associations for us all.

The theme of the opening concert of the 73rd Carmel Bach Festival was “The Spirit Triumphant” and this program truly lived up to this theme.

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