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| David Shemer,Myrna Herzog,Ophira Zakai,Yeela Avital,Anat Czarny (Eliahu Feldman) |
“French Exotica”, Concert No.5 of the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra’s
2017-2018 season, marked 350 years of the birth of François Couperin. As its
title implies the program also presented a specific phenomenon, that of
certain 17th-century musical innovators, in this program, the fascination of
French Baroque composers with distant and exotic lands, places actually only
read about in literature, places whose culture and music was basically unknown
to them, lands they would never visit. This writer attended the event on May
2nd at the Jerusalem International YMCA.
François Couperin is best known as a composer of harpsichord music. In his
program notes, Prof. David Shemer, founder and musical director of the
Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra, opens by stating that “the music of François
Couperin is no obvious choice for an orchestral program” but that “the 350th
anniversary of his birth is too important a milestone to be forgone in JBO
programs!” In programming of a less conventional kind, Maestro Shemer decided
the perform different sections of Couperin’s sacred “Leçons de ténèbres”
between other pieces on the program. Amongst the small amount of Couperin’s
ecclesiastical music that was published during his lifetime, its text, from the
Lamentations of Jeremiah, was traditionally sung close to- and during Easter.
To signify the descent into darkness, candles placed on a candelabrum were
extinguished one by one after each lesson, until the church was plunged into
darkness (Tenebrae). Performing the Leçons, soprano Yeela Avital and
mezzo-soprano Anat Czarny alternated in the solo role, performing the final
more intense and at times dissonant section together. With Yeela Avital’s more
introverted yet vehement emotional approach and Anat Czarny’s more declamatory
way of reflecting on the devastation of Jerusalem, both singers dealt admirably
with the work’s stringent technical- and musical demands, its controlled yet
potent intensity and power. As to the same construction of each section, they
introduced each incipit (marked with a Hebrew letter) with its demanding
lengthy melismas, followed by Jeremiah’s anguished lament, then to close each
section with Jeremiah’s words to the people of the Holy City: ‘Jerusalem, turn
to the Lord your God’. The JBO players endorsed the work’s personal
introspection.
Travelling the world began with Georg Muffat’s “Nobilis Juventus” (Noble
Youth) published in 1698, his parade of nations including sections dedicated to
the Spanish, the Dutch, the English, and the Italians. “Not really French” but
“the most French of the non-French composers”, in Shemer’s words, Muffat, who
had studied with Lully, has become “the most valuable source of information on
French Baroque performance practice”. Indeed, we were treated to a suite played
with majestic and delectable French elegance.
The title of Couperin’s “La Sultanne” probably refers to a French noblewoman who is said to have appeared at a ball disguised as the wife of a sultan. The composer’s four-voiced chamber setting was here enhanced by two flutes (Idit
Shemer, Geneviève Blanchard); the elegance, poignancy and tender moments
throughout the work probably vouching for the fact that the lady was indeed a woman
of noble bearing, with the dark, mellow timbre of the two viols at its opening suggesting the the composer's homage to her An Italianate work, using many aspects of the French
Baroque style, it is of exquisite beauty, offering solos and duets to the
delight of the audience. For 'cellist Lucia D'Anna, it was her first
performance on viol, carried out (alongside her teacher Myrna Herzog) with assurance and
stylistic conviction.
The program concluded with the final suite from Jean-Philippe Rameau’s
opéra-ballet “Les Indes Galantes”, a work whose titles (referring to African
slaves and savages) would today not be considered politically correct. However,
behind these fantastical stories set in distant lands, lies one historical
event that connects Rameau with exotic peoples and inspired at least some of
the movements of “Les Indes Galantes”: in 1725, a delegation of Native
Americans from the Louisiana Territory visited Paris to pledge allegiance to
King Louis XV. During that visit they performed a dance that Rameau witnessed
and took as his inspiration to compose a movement for harpsichord he called
"Les Sauvages." That same piece reappeared in 1735 as music for the climactic
"Danse du grand calumet de Paix" (Dance of the great peace pipe) of
the final suite of “Les Indes Galantes”. The instrumentalists gave the suite an
exuberant, good-natured reading, its heavy (folksy...er...primitive) steps only
a minimal part of what was basically finely-chiseled court music, complete with
French Ouverture, its final exuberant movement joined by the singers. A program
of exquisite music played with attention to detail and pleasing stylistic
engagement.
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