Concert Review: Frank Peter Zimmermann and Enrico Pace play Bach Sonatas in Avery Fisher Hall

FPZ  2011.10.12

     Tonight, violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann and pianist Enrico Pace performed six Bach sonatas for violin and harpsichord, BWV 1014-1019, in Avery Fisher Hall. These sonatas were written during Bach's prolifically-instrumental Cöthen period, which also produced the six sonatas for solo violin, and the Well-Tempered Clavier. They feature an expansion of chromaticism that came out beautifully in the slow movements tonight: the duo let the harmonies melt into the ethereal (just as they should), leaving the audience hanging on this golden thread, fully spellbound, and utterly silent. There were many beautiful moments of supple phrasing - the repertoire is staple for the performers, and they have found the freedom inherent in the music.
     The acoustical issues of playing this programme in the monstrous Avery Fisher Hall, were probably best illustrated by the amusing moment at the end, when, following a standing ovation, Zimmermann announced his encore in a very baroque dynamic, and all that could be heard where I sat, towards the rear of the orchestra, was something about "sixth". He had already raised his violin to start playing, when a woman from the back called out, in characteristically speak-one's-mind New-York style, "Sorry?"
     A wave of chuckles rippled forward through the audience; when it reached him, he replied, tongue-in-cheek, having clearly not heard what she'd said, "By Bach" (It was to the merriment of those who could hear it.)
     Being guilty of the following myself, I can perhaps especially appreciate the oddity of performing Bach in the 21st-century still in the mid-20th-century tradition. History, and the great recent developments in Historical Performance Practice, tell us that these pieces were not composed for giant concert halls (even if seating tonight was only on the orchestra and 1st-tier levels), that the baroque violin was much quieter than the modern one, and that the flamboyant grand piano (strikingly setting the stage tonight), would have been a plucky harpsichord instead. If we listen to the radio, we are highly likely to have had opportunity to hear it in this version, and it takes a moment for the ear to re-adjust to what those of us old enough to know cassette tapes remember from then. Occasionally, I was bothered by Zimmermann's use of vibrato, which, though normal in the 20th-century tradition, bent the pitch sufficiently for me to wonder if Bach's keen ear for pitch wouldn't have considered it so much as to be entering alternate tunings than well-tempered, a sort of trill in ill-tempered tuning. Likewise, I wished for a gentler E-string, one that when played open, would be more reminiscent of a wispy bird than a bright-faced cell phone (on which vibrato was a welcome softening). Nonetheless, since the concert had to be in Avery Fisher Hall, due to it being part of Zimmermann's residency this year with Avery Fisher's resident New York Philharmonic (though many wished that, if 'twere to be a large hall in New York, it might have been Carnegie) - the setting highlighted why the instruments have developed the way they have: to project. I also don't think that Bach would have minded a change in instrument to suit the venue, especially considering the programme notes' explication that the sonatas' titles' in the first source leave some wiggle room in instrumentation: "Six sonatas for obbligato harpsichord and solo violin, with the bass accompanied by a viola da gamba if you like". The acoustics were further enhanced by a very visually-appealing wooden screen behind the performers, though unfortunately Pace benefitted from its amplifying resonance more than Zimmermann, who of course stood further from it.
     As those gorgeously mesmerizing moments of phrasing showed, there is certainly value in this way as well. And being heard is a good thing too, though maybe not as funny as not being heard. $35 can be a prohibitive ticket price to musicians and students, and, considering that I didn't hear the first half, but rather was very fortunate to find a kind person with a complimentary ticket and "stub in" at intermission and hear the second half, I'm quite sure indeed that I preferred hearing it!

Take the A Train - or, Best Nine Dollars to Date

[Published in Strings Magazine and Chamber Music America, Spring 2006]

To Whom It May Concern;
or,
Dear Diary,

This evening, on the 42nd -street A-train platform, at midnight, returning to Manhattan from Long Island, I found myself rather weary and in the usual NY stand-offish mode induced from seeking privacy in thick crowds. I had nearly fully concentrated on my pumpkin muffin, except for a few strains of music seeping in from a busker some ways down the platform. A few more notes... Bach? the G minor solo violin fugue? here? sounding so good? and on...some extremely resonant instrument sounding like an organ?? After a brief internal struggle, to which only the soon-disappeared muffin was privy, gregariousness won over jaded attitude, and I followed my curiousity, passing by a fellow former Juilliard student and his girlfriend on the way to the source of the Bach. (To be precise, the Juilliard alum may well have still been in school; do the DMA students ever graduate?!?)
As it turned out, the musician was a guitarist, and the resonance, of course, was the subterranean concert hall buskers revel in for permutations of 8-minute intervals. My own train was running at 20-minute intervals at this hour, and the guitarist, having just played the last chord, sensed my presence with the musician's instinct for another musician, and returned my joking accusation of "You stole my repertoire!" with "There's plenty for two"! The conversation continued, fully in public, with him wanting to know if I was Russian, saying I looked so; I replied non-sequiturially, "Must be the Canadian in me". He repeatedly urged me to take out my violin. "Here?" "Now?" "But I'll have to go when my train's coming." I have no idea what actually induced me to do it, nor what induced me to NOT get on my train, which of course arrived the second I had put my shoulder rest on the violin. Certainly it wasn't snobbery, and certainly he was eager to play together; on what reasoning I'm not sure, as I hadn't delivered a press kit, nor a demo recording, nor had I even run my casual footwear by Juilliard's career advisor for professional approval.
In any case, I was not at professional level, for when choosing what to play, he suggested all the standard gig repertoire, which, unfortunately, I have always done my utmost NOT to memorize.
So we played the beginnings of things, and on anything I remembered we sounded rather better than decent, but I felt a bit silly at how much was escaping me. Yet being in good shape, and having spent all morning practising the other two Bach fugues, the C major and the A minor, I really wanted to play something more substantial. He hadn't wanted to play the G minor fugue together, but, out of other ideas, I just began to play it anyway. I hadn't practised it earnestly since my teens, and I have no idea where it came from. Next thing I knew I was completely enmeshed in it - now I know where the term "by heart" comes from! No thought was spared for how I executed any part of it, I simply played it - and probably more sincerely than if I had practised it alongside the other fugues today.
I was dimly aware that a large crowd had gathered, and that a few rowdy kids were standing too close (later someone told me that they had been trying to distract me, and that they would have been in big trouble with the crowd had they succeeded).
The guitarist played the last chord with me, and people clapped heartily when we finished. They left large tips, and as I hastily sprang onto my just-arrived A-train, several of my new fellow-passengers asked in detail what I had played, wanting to download it from I-tunes or buy a CD. One man had just lost his job today, and even though he was confident he could find another one tomorrow, he said it had helped him to hear me. A woman said that she had skipped the previous train to hear us, and that she had been deeply touched by the Bach, and that she now intends to practise the flute again, a joy she'd abandoned when going to college for a different field. For my part, I too was deeply touched that so many people had had such strong and beautiful reactions to my spontaneous memory-test, and from these conversations, it seems apparent to me that classical music in its most exuberant form, not watered-down or pandering-to-a-lower-common-denominator, has a huge potential place in society, and I would say a very much-needed one too.
Without moralizing, the moral for me of the story is: sharing a love is more fun than being jaded! It also can earn one a completely unexpected $9 from a gracious potentially-Russian guitarist who played on 42nd street at midnight on the A-train platform on October 21st a.m. Definitely comparable to similarly-earned cashews in first class on a trans-atlantic flight, n'est-ce pas? What's next, pinot noir?
(P.S. Does anyone know how to go about re-finding the gracious potentially-Russian guitarist who played on 42nd street at midnight on the A-train platform on October 21st am?)
P.P.S. What in the world do you do when you've forgotten the word "thesaurus"?
P.P.P.S. Lest my subway career go down the tubes ... ?