Some Summertime Bach

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Albuquerque, American Bach Soloists, Annandale-on-Hudson, Antonín Dvořák, Aston Magna, Bartók, Beethoven, Berkshire Choral Festival, Brahms, Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, Buxtehude, Cape Ann, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Carmel Bach Festival, Carmel-by-the-Sea, Caroline Shaw, cello, Chamber Music Northwest, Chamberfest Cleveland, Chanticleer, Charles Ives, Chelsea Music Festival, clarinet, Cleveland, Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, Concord Sonata, David del Tredici, David Lang, David Shifrin, Derek Bermel, Detroit, Dream of Gerontius, Elgar, Emerson Quartet, Frederic Chiu, Ghost Opera, Gloria, Goldberg Variations, Great Barrington, Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, Handel, Haydn, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Helmuth Rilling, Imani Winds, James Ehnes, James Tocco, Jeremy Denk, Kevin Puts, Kodály, Magnificat, Marc Neikrug, marimba, mass, Mass in B minor, Matthew Halls, Monica Huggett, Monteverdi, Mozart, New York, opera, Oregon Bach Festival, organ, Osvaldo Golijov, passion, Paul Jacobs, Paul Schoenfield, Paul Watkins, Pergolesi, Philip Glass, piano, Portland, Portland Baroque Orchestra, Prokofiev, Pulitzer Prize, Requiem, Rockport Chamber Music Festival, San Francisco, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Santa Fe, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Schubert, Schumann, Seattle Chamber Music Society, St. John Passion, St. Mark Passion, Strauss, Tan Dun, The New York Times, violin, Vivaldi, Vivian Schweitzer, Yefim Bronfman

CALIFORNIA

AMERICAN BACH SOLOISTS FESTIVAL San Francisco, 11-20 July 2014. Held at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the lineup this year features music by composers who influenced Bach, including Vivaldi, Pergolesi and Buxtehude; highlights of other programs are Handel’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso, ed il Moderato and Bach’s Mass in B minor (BWV 232).

CARMEL BACH FESTIVAL Carmel-by-the-Sea, Monterey, Pebble Beach and Salinas, 19 July through 2 August 2014. Bach naturally figures prominently here. On opening night his Magnificat (BWV 243) and Vivaldi’s Gloria (reflecting this year’s Italian theme) will be programed alongside a work commissioned from the young Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw.

MASSACHUSETTS

ASTON MAGNA Great Barrington and Waltham, and Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, 19 June through 19 July 2014. This early-music festival offers period-instrument programs including a celebration of C. P. E Bach’s three-hundredth birthday and a concert featuring Italian trio sonatas and a new work by Nico Muhly.

BERKSHIRE CHORAL FESTIVAL Sheffield, 13 July through 3 August 2014. This festival is proof that amateur choral singing continues to thrive, as eager singers arrive from around the country for an intense period of study and performances. Their efforts will culminate in performances led by professional musicians of Brahms’s Requiem, Bach’s St. John Passion (BWV 245) and Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius.

ROCKPORT CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL Cape Ann, 6 June through 13 July 2014. An estimable roster of musicians will play here, including the Emerson and Borromeo String Quartets. Jeremy Denk will perform Bach’s Goldberg Variations (BWV 988) and Ives’s Concord Sonata. The lineup also features a concert for clarinet and marimba and performances by Chanticleer and the Imani Winds.

MICHIGAN

GREAT LAKES CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL Detroit, 14-29 June 2014. Bach is in the spotlight this year and the pianist James Tocco has programed an appealing array of repertory favorites and contemporary works. The pianist Frederic Chiu will juxtapose music by Bach and Philip Glass and the cellist Paul Watkins, the festival’s artistic director designate, will join Mr. Tocco for Brahms’s Sonata for Piano and Cello no. 1.

NEW MEXICO

SANTA FE CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL Santa Fe and Albuquerque, 20 July through 25 August 2014. The pianist Yefim Bronfman is artist in residence at this festival, nestled in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. He will play a solo recital of Prokofiev and Marc Neikrug; other highlights include a Bach series; new works by Lowell Liebermann and Brett Dean; and performances by Alessio Bax, Ran Dank and Sasha Cooke.

NEW YORK

BRIDGEHAMPTON CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL 30 July through 24 August 2014. Concerts in various spots in Long Island’s East End include piano quartets by Brahms, Dvořák and Schumann; a premiere by Howard Shore; recent works by Kevin Puts, Gabriel Kahane and Evan Ziporyn; and Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins in D minor (BWV 1043). Performers include Brooklyn Rider and the pianists Gilles Vonsattel, Shai Wosner and Joyce Yang.

CHELSEA MUSIC FESTIVAL New York City, 6-14 June 2014. The German-Brazilian theme this year is inspired by the anniversaries of Richard Strauss, Villa-Lobos and C. P. E. Bach. The multigenre concerts, held at various galleries and institutes and often intertwined with visual and culinary themes, feature ensembles including the Sirius Quartet and premieres by composers including Augusta Read Thomas.

OHIO

CHAMBERFEST CLEVELAND Cleveland, 19-29 June 2014. It’s never too early to celebrate an anniversary: This festival toasts its third birthday with a spotlight on music for trios, with works by Haydn, Kodály, Schumann, Beethoven, Kevin Puts and Paul Schoenfield, as well as an arrangement of Bach’s Goldberg Variations for string trio. Also on the lineup is a new take on Tan Dun’s Ghost Opera.

OREGON

CHAMBER MUSIC NORTHWEST Portland, 23 June through 27 July 2014. David Shifrin, the clarinetist and artistic director, has programmed a wide range of repertory, including Mozart’s Quintet in A Major, for which he will join the Emerson Quartet. The lineup also includes the premiere of Stephen Hartke’s piano sonata for four hands by Anna Polonsky and Orion Weiss; Sasha Cooke singing Mozart, Bach and Schubert; and music by David del Tredici and Osvaldo Golijov.

OREGON BACH FESTIVAL Portland, Bend, Ashland, Corvallis, Florence and Eugene, 26 June through 13 July 2014. Matthew Halls, who succeeds Helmuth Rilling as artistic director, commemorates his debut season with the Monteverdi Vespers; Bach’s St. Mark Passion (BWV 247); a solo recital by the pianist Gabriela Montero; a performance by the organist Paul Jacobs; and Monica Huggett leading the Portland Baroque Orchestra. Mr. Rilling returns to conduct Mozart’s Requiem and Symphony no. 40.

WASHINGTON

SEATTLE CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY 7 July through 2 August 2014. The violinist James Ehnes is the music director here. Programming features a strong roster of musicians – including Augustin Hadelich, Richard O’Neill, Edward Arron, Inon Barnatan and Anthony McGill – performing music by Bach, Beethoven, Bartók, Derek Bermel and David Lang.

Vivian Schweitzer – The New York Times

Breaking Bad with the Goldberg Variations

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airplane, airport lounge, Albuquerque, bassline, Beethoven, Breaking Bad, Christmas, emotions, epithet, George Clooney, Goldberg Variations, Goldbergs Anonymous, hand-crossing, harpsichord, Honoré de Balzac, Jeremy Denk, manual, pho, piano, Seattle, Tchaikovsky, The Guardian, Toby Saks, Trio in A minor, Walter White

Jeremy Denk

I stopped watching Breaking Bad early in season three for a strange reason: I felt it was bad for my soul. Frankly, I had never been that concerned about my soul before, but when charred plane fragments began to rain down on Albuquerque (fans know what I’m talking about), I felt a dull ache, an unusual suffering, and I decided enough was enough. If you like, Breaking Bad is the Goldberg Variations (BWV 988) of misery. How many terrible consequences can Walter White reap from his first bad decision? At least as far as I watched, the show’s approach was exhaustive: a survey of emotional, physical, and spiritual harm. The Goldbergs are also exhaustive, and contingent on Bach’s first fateful decision, on the bassline he has chosen, the parameters he has set forth.

In fact, the Goldberg Variations have caused me more misery than any other piece of music in history, with the exception of the Tchaikovsky Trio in A minor (for totally different reasons). How many hours have I spent backstage fretting, knowing that there will be several insufferable know-it-alls in the audience, with their seven hundred recordings and deeply considered opinions? How many hours have I spent practicing those passages where the two hands climb over each other, then turn around (as if revisiting the site of an accident) and head for each other again?

The Goldbergs, originally for a two-keyboard instrument, become uniquely treacherous when played on just one. There are many impossible crossings, many unplayable moments. You have to decide which hand goes over the other, and practice how to make the switch smoothly; but there is always the possibility you will be on stage, communing with the spheres, and your fingers and wrists will literally tangle – like two dancers who stumble over each other – scattering wrong notes into paradise. You must always also be reminded that the instrument you are playing them on is the “wrong” one, especially by critics.

On top of their difficulty, the Goldbergs are terrifyingly clean. The work clings mostly to the purity of G Major, and its materials are so self-evident: the variation with the scales chasing each other in thirds (horrible memories of practicing scales as a child); the variation with the arpeggios (ditto); the variation with the scurrying passages in one hand and the leaps in the other. It almost like a lesson plan, with modular units, and everyone knows them – they are as well-traveled as a seasoned flier in an airport lounge.

I never wanted anything to do with the Goldbergs, but one day – I don’t know how – my friend Toby Saks convinced me to learn them for her festival in Seattle. She thought it would change my life. With one hasty yes I was committed – you cannot do a program substitution with the Goldbergs; it would be like trying to replace George Clooney. As usual, I procrastinated, and a panicky, cold December and January ensued, a Christmas holiday spent with a piano, wondering why it couldn’t have just been fifteen variations, say, or eighteen, instead of thirty? I broke them into bundles of five, to cope with the project’s enormity.

The day before my first performance, I remember sitting in a Vietnamese restaurant, hunched over a giant bowl of pho (outside fell classic Seattle drizzle), while my musician friends murmured consoling epithets at me – “I’m sure it will be fine” – treating me like a patient who was about to undergo an operation.

The first performance was a bit like a dream, much of it bad, but a few variations had something, I felt. My first taste of Goldberg addiction. Was I encouraged or war-scarred? A second period of obsession began, going over those stubborn variations in order to understand the independence (or lack thereof) of my hands, trying to find the most transparent and loving way to express them. And now, nine years later, with a recording under my belt, I probably belong in Goldbergs Anonymous.

The Goldbergs, insular and obsessed, have all the failings of classical music in general. The piece is a text reflecting on itself, satisfied in its own world, suggesting that everything you would ever want to know is contained within. The variations (by definition music about music) are subject to countless insider discussions in the outer world, to comparisons of recordings like heavyweight bouts, to that annoying word “definitive.” Despite this, Bach’s smile wins through. The piece is a lesson in many things, but primarily in wonder: the way that the tragic variations fuse seamlessly into the breathlessly comic, the way that simple scales become energy, joy, enthusiasm, the celebration of the most fundamental elements of music. This is the kind of beatific happiness that Beethoven eventually tried to attain, after the heroic happiness of the middle period. The last movements of Beethoven’s op. 109 and op. 111 invoke the Goldbergs, and represent a joy beyond achievement.

The copout of Breaking Bad, shared by many great novels and works of art (I’m thinking of you, Balzac!), is to leave us mired in a sea of human degradation. It is often easier to write sadness. And happiness easily becomes a shortcut, or a falsehood; “happy ending” is often a derogatory term. Of course, the ending of the Goldbergs is cut with melancholy (unlike Walter’s pure blue stuff). When the theme returns at the end, you realize this is the last time you will hear that turn into bittersweet E minor (melancholy about melancholy), and also the last time you will experience the chain of fifths with which Bach escapes from it. I’ll admit it always chokes me up, not because the piece is over, not because things are ending, but because of a sense of the completeness of everything that has come before, the rightness, and – if it doesn’t sound too cheesy to say – the radiance of experience. It gives you that rare thing in human existence: a sense that, at the end of something, it has all been worthwhile.

Jeremy Denk – The Guardian