Music of its time, and ours
December 2012
‘The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra’ is an odd name for a group when you first think about it.
‘Brandenburg’ no doubt was coined to evoke the eponymously named concertos that Johann Sebastian Bach presented to the Margrave of Brandenburg in 1721. Initially forgotten, they were recognised as a towering creative achievement soon after their rediscovery and publication in 1850, and have helped cement Bach’s reputation as the undisputed master of what we call the ‘Baroque’ style. The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra is, of course, a period orchestra specialising in music from this period, but the orchestra, as does the Baroque era itself, encompasses a much broader horizon of ideas and influences, as indeed does the name ‘Brandenburg’.
The Electorate of Brandenburg was in fact a principality of the Holy Roman Empire that today circles the city of Berlin but which unflatteringly used to be referred to as the ‘sandbox of Europe’. It suffered particularly badly during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), where it is estimated that over half of the population fell victim to marauding armies. By the time of Bach’s death, however, Brandenburg had become fully incorporated into the Kingdom of Prussia, now led by a flute-playing composer and military genius we know as Frederick the Great. ‘Brandenburg’ should remind us, then, not just of those six miraculous concertos, but also that Baroque music more generally comes out of, and indeed reflects, a deeply troubled and tragic, but also extraordinary, age of transformation. In this sense, not least, it is not a world away from our own.
In putting together programs of music from this time and leading an ensemble of our finest early music specialists, the Orchestra’s Artistic Director Paul Dyer has one of the more enviable music jobs in Australia. The tone of the Orchestra’s 2013 brochure, however, tends to emphasise the repertoire’s charm over its context. This is, I think, a missed opportunity for, while the attractiveness of this music requires no special pleading to those already familiar with it, for a younger audience it risks becoming, as it were, more about powdered wigs than powerful gigs.
Next year the orchestra is bringing to the Melbourne Recital Centre another five-concert season. The opening concert in March presents the French ‘superstar’ countertenor Philippe Jaroussky who will sing a program of arias by Handel and the lesser-known Nicola Porpora, works that were originally weapons of choice in musical duels fought by Giovanni Carestini and Farinelli, two rival castrati of the day. The timbre of the countertenor (which is the closest we can get to the sound of a castrato without unpleasant medical intervention…) seems to hold an ongoing fascination, whether because of the apparent supernatural quality of such a high pitch emanating from the body of a grown man, or whether because, like the spectacular dresses and thick makeup of a modern drag queen, it deep down helps us recognise and celebrate the idea that gender itself is similarly a staged phenomenon, a constructed social truth.
The ABO’s second concert is an all-Mozart program crowned by a performance of what is generally considered to be his finest liturgical composition, the ‘Great’ Mass in C Minor (KV 427). In it Mozart evidently paid homage to music of J. S. Bach that he had recently encountered in Vienna; it inspired some of his most technically accomplished and vocally demanding music. In so doing he also created a masterpiece that foreshadows in scale and scope the grand romantic vision of Beethoven’s ‘Missa Solemnis’ written some thirty-five years later. Like the Requiem, however, Mozart’s setting was left incomplete at the composer’s death in 1791. Lacking a Süssmayr to complete it (though there are now some worthwhile modern completions), the work has yet to become as famous. It unquestionably deserves to be.
A further two concerts in July and September focus respectively on Stefano Montanari the Italian violin virtuoso who will be both soloist and director in a program of early eighteenth-century Italian concertos, and German soprano Simone Kermes, a Baroque vocal specialist. Kermes will share the stage with resident concertmaster Matt Bruce, who will deliver a rarely performed concerto by Vivaldi (RV 190). This work is an appropriate companion piece for being, like the arias Kermes will perform, extraordinarily virtuosic, but one also cannot help noticing that Kermes and Vivaldi share striking red hair (it was for that reason that Vivaldi’s nickname was ‘il Prete Rosso’—the Red Priest).
The ABO’s season in Melbourne concludes, as it does for the first time this year, with ‘Noël! Noël!’, their program of music themed for the Christmas season. The accompanying press release tells us that this concert is ‘beloved for its timeless and ageless appeal’. I can’t help thinking, however, that precisely the opposite is true. It is beloved because it is music of a very particular time and place that can, and evidently does, speak powerfully to our own.
The full details of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra’s 2013 Season can be found at brandenburg.com.au/site. Noël! Noël! is performed at the Melbourne Recital Centre on December 8 at 5pm and 7pm.
brandenburg.com.au
melbournerecital.com.au
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