Gwyn Roberts is the co-director and soprano recorder player of Tempesta di Madre, which performed at St. Paul's Episcopal Church this past Friday. (Photo by Becky Oehlers)

by Michael Caruso

Two of Philadelphia’s most potent musical forces joined arms Friday evening, April 13, to present one of the season’s most memorable concerts. St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Chestnut Hill, hosted the final of its “Five Fridays” of fundraising recitals. The performers were four recorder players from Tempesta di Mare, Philadelphia’s leading baroque period instruments ensemble. The bill of fare was “The Art of the Fugue” by Johann Sebastian Bach. The concert drew the largest audience in the seven-year history of “Five Fridays” – more than 130 music lovers.

Unlike the “Goldberg Variations,” Bach’s “other” contrapuntal masterpiece, which was specifically composed for a two-manual harpsichord, “The Art of the Fugue” has existed more on paper than in performance since the master composed it in 1741. It is the culmination of a musical life devoted to the mastery of counterpoint in all of its manifestation. Significantly, Bach never specified what or which instrument(s) the collection was intended for. As a result, Bach specialists have performed it in many and various ways.

Although the most commonly chosen instrumentation is the pipe organ, I’ve heard selections played by string quartets and varied wind ensembles. Friday evening’s rendition, however, played on four recorders ranging from soprano to alto, tenor and bass, proved to be the most successful in my experiences. And they hark all the way back to my days at the Peabody Conservatory of Music of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Because all recorders’ voices are produced with far fewer overtones than that of any other woodwind instrument, their pitches are far closer to absolute purity than those of any of the others. The result is that a quartet of recorders can project the contrapuntal voices of a fugue with little or no blur between one pitch and the next, from one instrument to the next. It’s almost as though you’re hearing an aural x-ray of Bach’s music minus any and all extraneous distractions of timbre.

Of course, all of this remains in the world of supposition unless you’ve got four recorder players capable of actually playing Bach’s incredibly complex music. Fortunately for those 130-plus music lovers gathered together at St. Paul’s Church, Tempesta di Mare boasts just such a foursome. Gwyn Roberts on soprano, Priscilla Herreid on alto, Heloise Degrugillier on tenor and Rainer Backmann on bass recorder not only clarified Bach counterpoint – they brought the music to life in a way that made Bach’s technique of construction merely the prologue to some of the most moving music ever composed. The 12 fugues of “The Art of the Fugue,” plus the three-voice fugue Bach left uncompleted at his death, canvas a host of emotions placed in focus by counterpoint yet free in expressivity.

“Five Fridays” – which raises money for Face to Face Germantown and Philadelphia Interfaith Hospitality Network – came into being through the efforts of Zachary Hemenway, the music director of St. Paul’s Church for the part 10 years. Hemenway will be taking up a similar position in Seattle, Washington, after completing his final service at St. Paul’s Sunday, June 3.

ORMANDY’S LEGACY

Although the highlighted focus of the four Philadelphia Orchestra concerts performed April 12-15 was Deutsche Grammophon’s recording of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerti Nos. 2 and 3, the two related programs carried about them the legacy of Eugene Ormandy. Music director Yannick Nezet-Seguin and the Philadelphians were joined by Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov April 12 & 13 for the Second Piano Concerto and April 14 & 15 for the Third. Filling out the roster of music after intermission for all four concerts was Bela Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra.

For someone like myself, who has been attending Philadelphia Orchestra concerts since 1956, these three works are as closely associated with Ormandy as any in the active repertoire. Not only did Rachmaninoff perform both concerti with Ormandy on the podium, the composer even recorded the Third with him in 1939. Rachmaninoff showed his admiration for Ormandy and the Philadelphians by dedicating his “Symphonic Dances,” Opus 45, to them. It’s his final large orchestral work and, in my opinion, his finest.

Having learned Rachmaninoff’s “style” from the master, himself, it’s not surprising that Ormandy was considered the world’s greatest interpreter of his music. When, in 1973, Russian virtuoso Vladimir Horowitz wished to mark the centenary of Rachmaninoff’s birth with a recording of the Third Piano Concerto, he demanded that Ormandy join him and the New York Philharmonic for the recording. Having been born in Hungary like both Bartok and Zoltan Kodaly, it’s no less surprising that Ormandy was considered among the premier interpreters of Bartok’s music in general and his Concerto for Orchestra in particular. Ormandy and the Orchestra recorded it twice for Columbia Masterworks and once for RCA Victor.

The most famous characteristic of Ormandy’s 44-year tenure as the Orchestra’s music director was the legendary “Philadelphia Sound.” Its principal component was the glistening luster of the strings, but the mellow choral quality of the playing of the woodwind choir and the burnished beauty of the brass choir were no less integral and important. Beyond that, Ormandy’s interpretive style was best known for its spaciousness. A trained violinist who became a conductor more by necessity than by intention, Ormandy never failed to allow a phrase to sing out the full shape of its line and to breathe between one phrase and the next. While never failing to make sure that each phrase did, indeed, lead into the next within the context of the long narrative and dramatic arch of the overall score, one never felt either hurried or harried to reach the final chord.

This approach worked especially well with Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra because it caught more than merely the edgy use of Magyar folk melodies, harmonies and rhythms that infuse all of the Bartok’s (and Kodaly’s) music. It projected the reflective modal lyricism that was also at the heart of Bartok’s music. Ormandy was known as the greatest concerto soloist accompanist in classical music. Pianists working with him often maintained that he knew what they were going to do before even they knew it. When he accompanied Rudolf Serkin, he and the Orchestra sounded like Rudolf Serkin. When he accompanied Artur Rubinstein, they sounded like Rubinstein. His self-effacing sense of anticipation assured perfect ensemble.

Ensemble, both with the soloist and within the Orchestra, was far from perfect Saturday evening in the Kimmel Center’s Verizon Hall. Trifonov, whose digital technique is both dazzling and immaculate, chose tempi for the Third Concerto much like those of Rachmaninoff in that 1939 recording. Nezet-Seguin, on the other hand, seemed to be playing from another sound track – overplaying the superficial sentimentality of the music while ignoring its muscular rhythms and deeper dissonances compared to those displayed in the sunnier Second Concerto. Rachmaninoff’s music and his playing of it may reveal a touch of the melancholy, but neither of the two is maudlin. The result was that in both the score’s first and third movements, Nezet-Seguin and the Philadelphians fell noticeably behind their soloist.

In the Concerto for Orchestra, Nezet-Seguin pushed and pulled the music to achieve shimmering brilliance but very little throbbing sentiment.

WHOSE ‘VOICES’?

The previous weekend’s set of concerts was a mildly troubling affair. Two works on the program of undeniable genius were overshadowed by one of dubious merit. Leonard Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms” opened the concert Saturday evening, April 7. After intermission, Nezet-Seguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra performed Maurice Ravel’s orchestration of Modest Mussorgsky’s work for solo piano, “Pictures from an Exhibition.”  In between, Tod Machover’s “Philadelphia Voices” was given its commissioned world premiere. Despite the strenuous efforts of the Maestro, the Orchestra, the Westminster Symphonic Choir, the Keystone State Boychoir, the Pennsylvania Girlchoir (which is based at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill) and the Sister Cities Girlchoir, the work was revealed to be little more than (credit to Shakespeare) “sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

The text Machover employed focused on what I consider to be the “Rocky Balboa” image of Philadelphia. It was as though he is completely unaware of the demographic fact that more than three-quarters of “Philadelphians” don’t live within the confines of the City of Philadelphia but live, instead, in the suburban counties surrounding the city. Yet while they consider themselves to be “Philadelphians,” nothing about them made its way into the score. And even inside those confines, I found the text to be characterized by far more negativity than I regularly encounter in the city, even though I teach six days a week at the downtown branch of Settlement Music School, located at 416 Queen Street in the Queen Village section of town. Six days a week I find “Philadelphians” to be a hearty and optimistic lot if ever there was one.

Worse still, “Philadelphia Voices” is couched in a harmonic idiom far less adventuresome and complex than that used by Lin-Manuel Miranda in the smash Broadway musical hit, “Hamilton.” I couldn’t help feel that while the Bernstein was given a splendid reading, the Mussorgsky suffered from neglect during the rehearsal period. It seemed a shame that a masterpiece revered by Nezet-Seguin’s predecessors such as Leopold Stokowski, Eugene Ormandy and Riccardo Muti did not receive the sterling rendition we all know Maestro Nezet-Seguin could have given it.

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