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SALZBURG, Austria — Composer Johannes Brahms once featured Bach’s Partita No. “For me, Chaconne is one of the most wonderful and incomprehensible pieces of music I know,” he wrote of the famous finale of the 2nd. in D minor for solo violin.
In a letter to pianist and composer Clara Schumann in 1877, he continued, “On a single stave and for a small instrument, man creates a whole world of deepest thoughts and strongest feelings.”
In 1926, Chaconne became Bach’s first work to be heard at the Salzburg Festival, with a performance by violinist Johann Koncz. This summer, the piece was performed once again in the first of six music programs dedicated to the emerging German composer.
For the second consecutive year and against the odds, Salzburg FestivalOne of the most important events of classical music, it continued on its way despite the pandemic. Last summer’s offers were greatly reduced; this year the festival roared back with a full program of over 100 events, including operas and concerts of all genres.
Featured in the concert staff “towards heaven — Time With Bach,” is the German composer’s idiosyncratic exploration at a festival that often receives greater attention to Salzburg’s favorite son, Mozart, and the works of the event’s co-founder Richard Strauss.
Bach’s choice to return to his music this summer, during the second of two parts celebrating the festival’s centennial, was in part a response to the coronavirus pandemic. According to Florian Wiegand, concerts and media director of the Salzburg Festival, “Bach gives us an unbreakable order in his music, a clear structure and direction” to prevent loss of balance in these restless times.
The festival usually hides the intimate format of the “Time With” series for 20th-century and contemporary figures like Dmitri Shostakovich, Gérard Grisey, and the American composer Morton Feldman earlier this month.
“We are no longer focusing on a contemporary composer but on a totally timeless composer,” Wiegand said, adding that “Bach’s music is filled with a deep humanity.”
Considering how wide and varied Bach’s production was – he is one of the most prolific of all composers – there would be endless ways to build the series.
Speaking from a terrace atop the festival complex adjacent to the Mönchsberg mountain at the edge of Salzburg’s Altstadt, or old town, Mr Wiegand said the festival chose to avoid some of the composer’s best-known sacred works, including Rites and Passions. many of them have been realized in past installments. (The most recent program of Bach’s music in Salzburg was the 2018 concert of the Mass in B minor.)
Instead, the performances that make up the 2021 Bach program range from solo recitals to symphony concerts and even a dance production.
“In this series, we wanted to focus on the liturgically unconnected music of Bach,” he explained, adding that even secular works can provide solace during “this difficult and sometimes resigning situation for all of us.” After the festival’s artistic leadership decided on Bach, they reached out to leading musicians and artists to find what they found most meaningful at the moment.
The main production of “Heavenwards” is “In the Midst of Life”, a modern dance performance developed around Six Cello Suites by Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. The shows are scheduled to take place on 20 and 21 August at SZENE Salzburg, the venue of a former cinema.
The dance-concert and concert staged for the first time in Germany in 2017 went to New York last year it hosted the French cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras, one of the leading Bach performers of our time. As she moves through the eye-opening and virtuoso cycle, Ms. De Keersmaeker and four members of her company dance around Rosas, Mr. Queyras and his instrument, creating an intimate dialogue between music and movement.
Apart from this Wednesday’s concert – the Six Brandenburg Concertos performed by the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, a leading period instrument ensemble – all “Heavenwards” programs aim at intimacy.
A double recital brings master pianists of different generations face to face with Bach’s keyboard work. Earlier this week, 67-year-old Hungarian pianist Andras Schiff dived right into partitas; At the last concert of the series on August 23, 30-year-old Russian genius Daniil Trifonov will dedicate himself to “The Art of Fugue”, a work left unfinished at the time of Bach’s death.
Mr. Trifonov performed the hour-long loop at one of New York’s last concerts before the curfew at Alice Tully Hall in March 2020. Anthony Tommasini reviewing the performance in The New York Times Wrote that Mr. Trifonov “played with a focus and concentration that spread throughout the hall. The performances were full of shimmering grace, wonderful shadows and even hasty touches.”
Mr. Trifonov will start the program for his performance in Salzburg with a left-handed arrangement of Chaconne from Brahms’ Partita in D minor.
At the end of July, Chaconne also took part in the opening concert of the “Heavenwards”: a recital by Austrian violinist Thomas Zehetmair performing sonatas and partitas considered to be the pinnacle of the solo violin repertoire. Mr. Alone on the stage of the Great Hall of the Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation, where Koncz played 95 years ago, Zehetmair captivated the audience during the three-and-a-half-hour (two intervals) performance.
Perhaps none of the musicians on the series has a history as deep as Mr. Zehetmair, who has been a familiar face at the festival since his debut here in 1977, both with this city and its signature musical event. 15.
“HE is is ambitious,” he admitted in an interview before the concert. He had recorded the cycles twice, but had never done them fully in a single evening before. “It’s pretty challenging for the audience as well,” he added.
“Cycles are fantastic in all their senses,” he said, noting that he was excited to play them in the order they appeared in Bach’s catalog of works. For example, the light and vibrant Partita No. He said he enjoyed the opportunity to finish the concert with 3.
“It’s so great to have a lighter ending after all the intensity of artistic and intellectual challenges,” he said. “The audience can go out with a light feeling.”
“There has never been a series so devoted to Bach,” said Markus Hinterhäuser, artistic director of the Salzburg Festival. Promotional video of the festival program that will last until 30 August. “Heavenwards” showcases Bach on the anniversary of Salzburg, allowing the festival to “connect with the original inspiration behind everything musical”.
“Even though these are earthly artifacts, they take us straight to heaven,” said Mr Hinterhäuser. In his words, a maxim of 20th century composer Mauricio Kagel can be heard echoing. “Not all musicians may believe in God,” he famously said, “but they all believe in Bach.”
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