by Michael Caruso

Harpsichordist Adam Pearl gave three performances of Johann Sebastian Bach’s monumental “Goldberg Variations” March 15, 16 & 17. The longtime harpsichordist for Tempesta di Mare, Philadelphia Baroque Orchestra, Pearl played Saturday, March 17, in Chestnut Hill’s Woodmere Art Museum as part of Tempesta’s artist recital series. The Peabody Conservatory of Music alumnus and faculty member also performed the previous two evenings at the Hill-Physick House in Society Hill.

Formally known as “Aria with diverse variations for a two-manual harpsichord” and found as Bach’s fourth collection of keyboard works of 1741, it’s perhaps best known as having been composed for a young harpsichordist to play for the Russian Count Keyserlingk. The Count often stayed in Leipzig, where Bach worked as the city’s kapellmeister, and suffered from insomnia. He supposedly asked for a piece that was both cheerful and simple and that would help him fall asleep.

It’s a story that began its ersatz life in the early 19th century and that, like most “alternative facts,” has kept its death-grip on the public’s imagination ever since. Most two-manual (keyboards) harpsichords are rather full-sounding instruments. The sheer number of notes heard from the first presentation of the aria’s theme through its subsequent 30 variations to its ultimate reprise is so great that one finds it very difficult to imagine falling asleep while the work is being played right there in your own bedroom.

Certainly, I didn’t even approach falling asleep while listening to Pearl negotiate his masterful way through Bach’s inexhaustible bag of contrapuntal tricks. On the contrary, I was mesmerized by not just Bach’s music but by Pearl’s brilliant and expressive rendition of it.

Pearl played on his own personal harpsichord, built two years ago and based on a 1722 instrument made in Dresden. Eschewing the equal temperament tuning made famous in Bach’s two books of “The Well-Tempered Klavier,” Pearl used what’s known as “Kirnberger III,” an adaptation of pure tuning (through octaves, fourths & fifths) developed by Johann Kirnberger, who was a student of Bach’s. It produces a small number of “out of tune” notes depending upon the number of sharps or flats the key signature employs. It’s never as jarring as true pure tuning can be, but it’s not as homogenized as equal temperament, either. As a result, dissonances can be both tart and expressive.

In his “Goldberg Variations,” Bach deployed the full spectrum of the Baroque “doctrine of affections,” which held that all human emotions could be projected in the arts by various gestures, inflections, modes, embellishments, rhythms, tempi, dissonances and resolutions. Pearl matched the composer’s intentions by playing up the differences between one variation and the next to delineate the intended emotional variety.

Yet he sustained an ongoing line of thematic, harmonic, rhythmic and textural development that never set one variation free from those that went before and those that came after. The listener felt as though he or she was being treated to a guided tour of Bach’s matchless command of contrapuntal technique, never displayed for the sake of superficial virtuosity but always employed in the service of sharing Bach’s unique musical spirituality.

In his program notes, Pearl called the “Goldberg Variations” perhaps the greatest work ever composed for harpsichord. As a pianist who adores the “last five” piano sonatas of Beethoven and considers them the finest works ever written for the piano, I’d remove the “for harpsichord” from Pearl’s description and leave the “Goldberg Variations” as the greatest score ever composed for any and all keyboard instruments.

Tempesta di Mare will return to Chestnut Hill Friday, April 13, 7:30 p.m., for “Bach: Art of the Fugue.” For more information call 215-755-8776 or visit www.tempestadimare.org.

'AGE OF ANXIETY’

French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet joined Yannick Nezet-Seguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra in concerts March 16-18 in the Kimmel Center’s Verizon Hall. Thibaudet was on hand to make his considerable contribution to the Orchestra’s celebration of the centenary of the birth of Leonard Bernstein: pianist, conductor, composer and alumnus of Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music.

Music director Nezet-Seguin, who earlier on Saturday afternoon conducted the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Richard Strauss’ “Elektra,” led Thibaudet and the Philadelphians in a superb rendition of Bernstein’s Symphony No. 2 for Piano & Orchestra (“The Age of Anxiety”) after W.H. Auden.

After a title so overburdened by verbiage, the listener might be too frightened to give the score a fair hearing. Yet nothing could be more foolhardy. “The Age of Anxiety” is a marvelous example of Bernstein’s uncanny ability to channel his personally eclectic tastes into a concisely shaped, imaginatively orchestrated and deeply impassioned work.

By the time Bernstein composed “The Age of Anxiety” between 1947-48, he was already in command of the jazz he adored, the neo-classicism he admired and the lyricism that was the birthright of his individual genius. The music dashes here and there with an enticing rhythmic propulsion and an intriguing harmonic palette, yet it never fails to sing in the sometimes jagged but always beguiling tunefulness that gave academic composers the excuse to dismiss Bernstein as a Broadway dilettante but that makes his music particularly relevant nowadays. By successfully assimilating all the musical styles of his times, Bernstein’s music has the rare ability to speak to almost anyone and everyone. If that’s not “genius,” I don’t know what is.

Thibaudet caught the essence of the music with playing that was supple and muscular. Nezet-Seguin and the Philadelphians offered him not just support but an enhanced collaboration that was stylish and expressive.

After intermission, Nezet-Seguin led the Philadelphians in a finely crafted yet highly charged reading of Schumann’s Symphony No. 4 in D minor, Opus 120, and a dashing rendition of Strauss’ “Don Juan.”

AVA’s ‘JUBILATE!’

The Academy of Vocal Arts presented its annual concert of sacred music March 17 & 18. Senior vocal coach David Antony Lofton conducted almost the entire student body of the nation’s only full-scholarship school devoted solely to singing and the AVA Opera Orchestra in a program of music that began with Bach and ended with Warren Martin. Along the way, AVA’s singers covered the gamut of styles and emotions expressed by great composers working in the service of sacred texts.

The motivation behind “Jubilate!” came several years ago from East Falls’ K. James McDowell, AVA’s president & artistic director. McDowell noticed that as a result of the disappearance of classical music from most parishes and congregations, many of the school’s young singers arrived at AVA with little or no knowledge of the phenomenal repertoire of sacred vocal and choral music.

Not only did this deprive them of a first-hand experience with some of the greatest music ever composed, but it also drastically limited their ability to audition for professional choruses and symphony orchestras who still program these masterpieces, thereby circumscribing their careers.

Lofton has become a master at putting together a roster of pieces comprised of arias, ensembles and choruses that span the centuries in a manner both enlightening and enthralling. Contemporaries Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel reign supreme through works such as the former’s “St. John Passion” and the latter’s “Joshua” and “Alexander’s Feast.” Franz Joseph Haydn’s “The Creation” and “The Seasons” move from the Baroque to the Classical while Felix Mendelssohn’s “St. Paul” and Gioachino Rossini’s “Stabat Mater” and “Messa di Gloria” usher in the Romantic period.

Gabriel Faure and Giuseppe Verdi composed the celebrated setting of the Roman Catholic Church’s Latin Requiem Mass, with the latter also composing one of the loveliest settings of the traditional “Ave Maria” text in his penultimate opera, “Otello.” Frenchmen Georges Bizet and Jules Massenet gave us an “Agnus Dei” and “La Vierge.” And John Musto, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Warren Martin admirably represented the 20th century in the repertoire.

Standouts Saturday evening included baritone Lukasz Zientarski in “Joshua,” baritone Anthony Whitson-Martini in “Alexander’s Feast,” bass-baritone Daniel Noyola in “The Creation,” soprano Rebecca Gulinello in “St. Paul,” bass Brent Michael Smith also in “St. Paul,” soprano Alexandra Razskazoff & mezzo Gabriella Flores in the “Stabat Mater,” tenor Oliver Sewell also in the “Stabat Mater,” tenor Matthew White in Bizet’s “Agnus Dei” and soprano Vanessa Vasquez in Verdi’s “Ave Maria.”

Saturday’s concert was given in the Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity on Rittenhouse Square in center city. The audience fell far short of filling the pews. Perhaps it’s time for AVA to consider returning to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Chestnut Hill next year for a fuller house?

You can contact NOTEWORTHY at Michael-caruso@comcast.net. To read more of NOTEWORTHY, visit www.chestnuthilllocal.com/Arts/Noteworthy.