Buxtehude and his Circle
St Mary’s Church, Haddington, 9/9/24
Concerto Copenhagen 1, Lars Ulrik Mortensen, Artistic Director, Jakob Bloch Jespersen, bass
A concert with the title ‘Buxtehude and his Circle’ promised a certain amount of obscurity, since Buxtehude, a Danish composer associated with sacred music, primarily in Lübeck in the very north of Germany, is not particularly well-known, and thus his circle is going to be, by definition, even less well-known. Add to this the fact that the soloist was a bass singer from Denmark, singing a variety of unknown sacred music, and you might expect to be huddled together for warmth amongst a tiny handful of baroque specialists in a corner of St Mary’s, Haddington!
Not at all! This is the Lammermuir Festival, now in its 15th year of existence, a beacon of light in East Lothian, and a guarantor of good performances, however unlikely the programme. Therefore, a good audience filled the nave of this splendid church to hear an excellent concert given by Concerto Copenhagen, directed by its Artistic Director, Lars Ulrik Mortensen, with the Danish bass, Jakob Bloch Jespersen.
James Waters, one of the Artistic Directors of the Festival, told us before the concert that he had been trying to get Concerto Copenhagen to Scotland for some time, and was delighted, after some months of agonising over funding, to have engaged the ensemble for a residency of four concerts, of which this was the first.
The ensemble has established a fine reputation over the last 30 years for historical authenticity and innovative performance styles, and this concert gave us a fine introduction to their work. As a bass singer myself, I was intrigued by the programme, as I thought I knew most of the repertoire for my voice type but was unaware of any of these pieces. Truth be told, it’s hard to find a great amount of variety in baroque bass music. 25 years ago, with a German baroque ensemble, I sang two solo concerts of Handel and Purcell bass music in Berlin and Halle, the second concert in Handel’s family home, and we had to search far and wide to come up with a programme of even those great composers.
None of the music tonight was on the same level as those masters of composition, but there was a lot to enchant the ear and intrigue the senses, and the audience was thoroughly entertained by the performers.
We started with Franz Tunder’s Latin work, ‘Da mihi, Domine’, a piece for voice and instruments in two sections. Tunder (1614-67) was Buxtehude’s predecessor as organist at the Marienkirche in Lübeck, and his combination of Venetian-influenced word painting with German chorale tradition was clearly a deliberate mixing of styles. Jakob Bloch Jespersen, a dapper figure in jacket and tie contrasting with the black-clad instrumentalists, displayed a pleasing bass voice, not large, but well-controlled and with a good lower range. The problem for me with most of the vocal music in this concert was that the upper registers of the voice were rarely visited or displayed, and this led to a certain monotony of expression. Perhaps to compensate for this, Mr Jespersen indulged in a great array of gestures and body movements throughout the concert, very few of which seemed relevant to the texts, and which were, certainly to this listener, rather off-putting. Less is often more in these circumstances, and some element of stillness would have improved the performance. There is no doubt at all about the excellence of Mr Jespersen’s coloratura and his facility at the bottom, with some exceedingly sonorous low notes, which had me and others purring with pleasure!
Johann Balthasar Erben’s Sonata for two violins and continuo, was a delight, as Fredrik From and Hannah Tibell wove delicate webs of sound over the subtle harpsichord continuo of Lars Ulrik Mortensen. This may have been my favourite piece in the concert. A hexachord based on a pattern of ut, re, mi fa, sol, la formed the basis for a work based on a mediaeval hymn but developed into a contemporary Italian sonata form. Very simple, very clever and very lovely!
The concert continued in this mode with a vocal work followed by an instrumental piece, and so forth. None of the music was exceptional, but much of it was very beautiful, and the players demonstrated a high level of skill, both technically and artistically.
Johann Heinrich Schmelzer (1623-80) spent most of his career at the Viennese court, and his Harmonia à 5 was played directly after the interval. Schmelzer was a violin master and a fine exponent of the trendy Stylus Phantasticus, a sort of written down improvisation, and this Harmonia was a riot. A mixture of strings, bassoon and continuo explored various sections of virtuosity and sonority, and kept up the appearance of ad lib playing, even though it was all notated.
The concert ended with a sacred concerto for bass voice and instrumental ensemble by Mathias Weckmann (1616-74) , ‘Kommet her zu mir alle’. The words are a German version of those made familiar in the Messiah – Come unto him, all ye that labour.’ Weckmann had travelled extensively, from southern Germany, via Dresden, to Copenhagen, working closely with Heinrich Schütz, and eventually to Hamburg, and this piece clearly shows the influence of contemporary Italian music, notably the music of Grandi and Monteverdi. Again Jakob Bloch Jespersen conducted himself through the piece, and again he sang it very well. If you remember my review of Ian Bostridge in the Edinburgh Festival, you will recall that I was irritated by his histrionics. It seems that Mr Jespersen has contracted ‘Bostridgitis’. He would do well to get the vaccine! Vocally, his performance was first rate, with very impressive coloratura, which, as I well know, is not easy for a bass. Hats off to him!
So, there we have it. Nothing to set the heather on fire, but an extremely well-performed concert of decent music.
