Bach Suites and Concertos
Program Notes by Jennifer Gersten
The pianist Simone Dinnerstein, a much-beloved Miller Theatre artistic partner, returns for the 2023-24 season with the second of three programs delving into that endlessly renewable artistic resource: the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Upon learning that the flutist Christina Jennings would be available to play in tonight’s performance at Miller Theatre—the second in pianist Simone Dinnerstein’s Bach series this spring—Dinnerstein designated Jennings her north star, choosing to feature works that highlighted her instrument. Some of the flute-wise selections on this program are works that Dinnerstein has previously performed with Jennings at Miller Theatre, which, for Dinnerstein, is part of the privilege of working at Miller. “These are opportunities for growth,” she says. “We have a lot of people who are returning subscribers, and it’s nice for them to hear how the music changes over the years.”
As with the rest of the concerts in this series, Dinnerstein has modified Bach’s scores to fit her conditions. In particular, she has taken various liberties to rearrange the instrumentation of the orchestral suites, motivated by her personnel, the members of her hand-picked ensemble Baroklyn. For example: to better feature the sound of Gabriela Diaz, the principal second violinist, Dinnerstein will have Diaz and concertmaster Rebecca Fischer switch who is leading when the music repeats in a few movements. In the third orchestral suite, she has opted to omit the wind, brass, and timpani, moving music from those instruments to the two flutes and piano. “I think the altered instrumentation allows us to hear Bach’s counterpoint in a new light,” Dinnerstein says.
If the notion of introducing such changes to Bach’s music makes one balk, consider that Bach himself was consistently adapting his music to accommodate the venues and musicians at his disposal. “Bach was a very practical musician, and his music lends itself not only to many different instrumentations, but also interpretations, even different genres,” Dinnerstein reflects. “I’ve been growing increasingly free in how I play the music,” she adds. “Through this series at Miller Theatre, I’ve had the opportunity to work with various singers on different cantatas, and it’s been interesting to see how they sing Bach: they have to make really smart choices about how to choose the tempo or where to take a breath that will enable the text to come through, which is something that, as an instrumentalist, I never have to think about. It does make me reflect on how I should approach playing Bach’s instrumental music as though there were text.”
“Baroklyn is not a musician-run ensemble in that all of these musicians are following my lead. They’re all very collaborative in the sense that they’re helping my own vision come to life, and that’s really exciting.”
Playing with the capable musicians of Baroklyn has allowed Dinnerstein to deepen and expand her perspectives. “What’s special about these musicians is that they’re not only great listeners and collaborators, but they also feel able to bring their own voices to the group,” she says. “This is not a musician-run ensemble in that all of these musicians are following my lead. They’re all very collaborative in the sense that they’re helping my own vision come to life, and that’s really exciting.” More than musical taste unites some of the players on tonight’s program. The fourteen-year-old flutist and composer Ilaria Hawley, whom Dinnerstein has known from birth, has been taught by Jennings at Greenwood Music Camp, a summer program for young classical musicians in the Berkshires. Their older sibling, the violist Oriana Hawley, performed in the first concert in the Bach series in March. Fischer, the concertmaster, happens to be the siblings’ mother.
Keyboard Concerto No. 6 in F major, BWV 1057
While Bach’s 15 keyboard concerti are some of the first concerti ever written for the harpsichord, they were not without precedent: many are thought to have emerged from transcriptions and adaptations of his previous concerti, though in many cases the source material has never been found. As the scholar Werner Breig suggests, the harpsichord concerti functioned as a “large-scale retrospective” of Bach’s concerto writing, perhaps the composer’s way of confirming that his ideas could function outside their original containers. Many of the concerti reflect Bach’s avid studies of Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi, no stranger to the concerto form himself, though he wrote none for the harpsichord. Evident in a number of Bach’s harpsichord works is the use of the ritornello (“returning thing”) form characteristic of Vivaldi’s concerti, a passage that starts and finishes the movement as well as contains a blueprint for the movement’s harmonic structure.
The sixth concerto, the penultimate in a set of seven (BWV 1052-58) that Bach composed while stationed in Leipzig as the city’s music director, is an arrangement of the fourth Brandenburg concerto, the sole Brandenburg to employ every instrument in every movement. From the original violin part and a new continuo, Bach seems to have derived the solo keyboard part. The soloist, however, often splits the glory with two flutes, whose parts Bach retained from the original.
The salutatory first movement features a ritornello on the long side, clocking in at 83 measures. The second movement, oriented around a two-note “sighing” figure, finds the soloists occupied with echoing one another. In the cheery third movement, the concerto turns fugal, letting each group enter separately with the subject before each of the three soloists takes their turn at center stage. The keyboard part here is particularly riveting, at one point comprising a blistering onslaught of notes from which the soloist ideally emerges unscathed.
Orchestral Suite No. 2 in B minor,
BWV 1067
Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068
The four works that we have come to refer to as Bach’s orchestral suites were, in their day, known as “ouvertures,” after their opening overture movements. Bach’s inspiration lay in a broader German trend of drawing from contemporaneous French approaches, namely in the work of Louis XIV’s court composer Jean-Baptiste Lully, whose operas abounded with short, dance-inspired instrumental works that proved popular enough to adapt into collections, or suites, that began with the original overture and could be performed outside the opera house.
Few precise conclusions can be drawn about when exactly Bach composed each of these suites: scholars have suggested either his years in Cöthen, from 1717 to 1723, or his tenure as music director of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, from 1723 until his death in 1750, as possibilities. What is certain, given that none of these positions specifically entailed composing for orchestra, is that Bach seems to have been operating of his own creative accord.
Of the set, the B minor suite for solo flute, strings, and continuo has the leanest instrumentation. It begins with an Ouverture in the French style: a dignified rhythmic opening followed by a more nimble fugue, and then a return to the original atmosphere. Next comes a collection of shorter movements derived mostly from dances, starting with the Rondeau and then Sarabande, both of a stern and beleaguered character, followed by the more agile Bourrée I and II. In the succeeding Polonaise (Lentemente), the flute enjoys an extended discourse with the cellist, who plays the opening theme
while the flute explores more ornamental territory. Next is the Menuet, a dance in three, and then the concluding Badinerie, whose acrobatic solo part has inspired intrepid flutists to perform the movement on its own.
The third suite in D major begins with the Ouverture movement, and then comes the famous Air—compulsively doled out at the likes of wedding cocktail hours and law school receptions, for which the composer is admittedly not to blame—in which the violins’ melody glides above a steady bass line. Succeeding the Air are the jaunty Gavottes I and II, dances in duple-time whose theme recurs throughout the movement. The fourth movement is a lively Bourrée, and the last a celebratory Gigue with high-flying solos; the attuned ear will quickly catch onto the dance’s characteristic groups of notes in three.
Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D major, BWV 1050
Scholarly speculation has it that Bach composed his six Brandenburg concerti as a sort of unsolicited job application for a position with the Margrave of Brandenburg, a region in the northeastern lowlands of Germany. The concerti’s current-day ubiquity, particularly around the holiday season, is perhaps well-deserved considering how long they languished in the shadows, with doubts about whether they were ever performed in Bach’s lifetime, let alone whether the Margrave deigned to acknowledge receipt—his loss, of course.
While this last of the Brandenburg concertos features three soloists—flute, violin, and harpsichord—in addition to strings, to the harpsichord belongs the majority of the spoils. Typically relegated as solely accompaniment in Bach’s time, the instrument, particularly in the first movement, is released from subordinacy: two-thirds of the way through, it takes leave of its bandmates to embark on a minutes-long solo (marked senza stromenti, or “without strings,” but which is also called a cadenza) that some scholars suggest was Bach’s way of test-driving his new harpsichord as well as spotlighting his own brilliant technique. In the restful second movement, the ensemble once again takes a back seat while the three soloists, this time on more equal footing, pass around a serene four-note motif. The final movement, oriented around a buoyant phrase, finds the harpsichord once again in the background, though not without much virtuosic bustling.
Jennifer Gersten is a violinist and writer from Queens, New York. Her reporting, essays, and criticism appear in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Bloomberg, and many other publications.