Familiar cantatas offer fresh delights

Anniversary event graced by
festive Bach offerings

by David Gordon Duke

Festive Bach Cantatas for Christmas
Early Music Vancouver
Chan Centre, Dec. 22

Early Music Vancouver’s presentation of cantatas by J. S. Bach was planned to add something new and worthwhile to our holiday diet of Messiahs and Nutcrackers, choirs and carols. Beyond seasonal festivity, this was also an anniversary event, celebrating 35 years of EMV.

In no small measure EMV has made early music a key component of the classical milieu in Vancouver, now a community of significance in the international early-music network. Today its forward- as well as backward-looking visionaries are stretching the concept of “early music” not just to pre-Renaissance repertoire, but to encompass music from diverse cultural traditions and even authentic performances of Mendelssohn and Brahms.

Wednesday’s performance, a co-production with UBC’s Chan Centre, combined four favourite singers— Suzie LeBlanc, Laura Pudwell, Colin Balzer and Tyler Duncan—- with instrumental soloists and members of the Pacific Baroque Orchestra.

Bach composed church cantatas by the hundreds. EMV’s on-going Cantata project plumbs this wealth of superb music and demonstrates the astonishing variety of these hybrid masterworks: didactic theology costumed as baroque opera.

The programme opened with the Advent cantata Nun komm der Heiden Heiland II (Now come, Saviour of the heathens), composed in 1724. Here the opening chorus was sung one-to-a-part by the four soloists, followed by two extended arias for male voices and a concluding chorale setting. Colin Balzer is a genial, light tenor with an attractive tone, perhaps not yet entirely comfortable coping with Bach’s unbelievably attenuated melismas. Bass Tyler Duncan’s voice continues to develop in depth and complexity; his recitative and aria was dramatic and telling.

Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen! (Praise ye God in every nation!) is a showpiece for a soprano. Suzie LeBlanc’s instrument isn't particularly large, but her focus, almost incandescent brightness, and clean, lithe agility were particularly apt here. Although her central aria was dimmed by messy accompaniment, the concluding sequence of chorale and virtuoso Alleluia was one of the evening’s highlights.

Arias from the Christmas Oratorio launched the second half. Here Bach matches voice quality to text and underscores mood with shifting instrumentation.

Tyler Duncan was highlighted by John Thiessen’s baroque trumpet, its high, bright sound splendidly festive, ever sweet, and wonderfully in balance. Laura Pudwell’s rich alto was effectively paired with Mark Destrube’s baroque violin, and tenor Balzer’s excerpt called for a duo of oboes d’amore, played by Washington McClain and Sand Dalton.

The final cantata, Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben (Heart and mouth and deed and being), rounded out the programme with a florid opening chorus, short arias for all four singers, and a concluding chorale. Then came a written-in encore, the chorale Wohl mir, dass ich Jesum habe, better known as “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring.” Presented at a “correct” rapid 18th-century dance tempo, it underscored the fundamental message of EMV: new delights from old music.

Vancouver Sun
26 Dec. 2004

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