Volume 24 Issue 8 - May 2019

Beat by Beat | Early Music
John Abberger’s
Bach Fest at Four
MATTHEW WHITFIELD
For the past three years, the Toronto Bach Festival has presented
a three-day intensive series of concerts, recitals, and lecture
presentations focusing on Johann Sebastian Bach, his world,
and his works. Increasing in size and scale each year, the festival
attracts magnificent performers and interpreters. This year it runs
from May 24 to 26 and includes ensemble performances of Bach’s
Fifth Brandenburg Concerto and his Lutheran Masses, as well as solo
performances by harpsichordist Luc Beauséjour and cellist Elinor
Frey, and a lecture on
Bach and the French
Luc Beauséjour
Style featuring renowned
musicologist Ellen Exner.
With such a full and
fulfilling roster of events,
Bach aficionados have
much to look forward to.
The Toronto Bach
Festival is led by
founding artistic director
and renowned early
music specialist John
Abberger, perhaps most
immediately recognizable
as the principal
oboist of the Tafelmusik
Baroque Orchestra, who will be at the
helm for both the Brandenburg Concerto
and Lutheran Mass concerts. In preparation
for this year’s festival, Abberger
shared his thoughts on Bach, the master’s
works, and how the Toronto Bach Festival
provides a unique perspective in the
interpretation of this timeless music:
WN: Toronto is a city full of classical
music of all types, including strong
proponents of Early Music. What led you
to establish the Toronto Bach Festival in
such a culturally dense arts scene?
JA: First of all, despite the high name
recognition that Bach enjoys, and despite the fact that everyone knows
he wrote truly great music, a good 70 percent of his music is seldom
performed. This is because many major musical organizations have a
broader mandate to perform music from a huge repertory and cannot
program more than a few works by Bach in the course of their regular
offerings. A Bach festival provides an obvious context for performing
lots of Bach, and while the Toronto Bach Festival may occasionally
perform works by other composers (whose works illuminate our
understanding of Bach’s achievements, or works that show his influence
on later composers), our mandate is to perform Bach, and to
explore as many of his works as possible, the well-known and the less
well-known. Consider the wealth of amazing music contained in the
over 200 cantatas: in my 30 years with Tafelmusik we have performed
a complete cantata on only a small handful of occasions.
Second, I am interested in applying the performance practice
research findings of the last 30 years that indicate that Bach habitually
used a much smaller vocal group when he performed his choral
works. Apart from age-old Victorian assumptions about large choirs
performing Bach, many musical organizations are structurally set
up to use these larger choirs, such as the Mendelssohn Choir at the
Toronto Symphony. I find performing Bach’s vocal works in the way
we do (with one or two singers to each part) to be artistically compelling,
and I think our audiences deserve an opportunity to hear these
great works performed this way.
Third, many cities (large and small) have a regular Bach festival. A
city with such a strong and vibrant cultural landscape surely deserves
to have a festival devoted to one of the greatest composers of all time.
Look at the wonderful success of the Toronto International Film
Festival. Wouldn’t it be great if we had a Bach festival that is a cultural
destination to celebrate here in Toronto?
This year’s festival features an eclectic mix of Bach’s secular and
sacred music. Is there an organizing principle or underlying idea
that permeates your concerts and
programming?
Elinor Frey Absolutely! From day one, a
guiding principle for the programming
has been that the three main
genres in which Bach worked,
choral, keyboard and instrumental,
should be represented at each
festival. This is why we will always
have a keyboard recital, generally
alternating between harpsichord
and organ. Another important
artistic mandate is to perform
cantatas each year. With so many to
choose from, we won’t run out for
quite a few years! The instrumental
works comprise works for solo
instruments (violin, cello and
flute) as well as chamber and
orchestral music. I strive each
year to find a nice balance with
the great diversity of genres in
which Bach worked.
Why Bach?
It’s difficult to overstate
the influence of Bach and his
music on the musical landscape
of the ensuing 250
years of Western European
musical culture. None of the
great achievements of Mozart,
Beethoven and Brahms would
have been possible without
the path-breaking creations of
John Abberger
Bach. But what we really want
to celebrate is the uncanny
ability of Bach’s music to reach into our souls and speak to us. Many
writers and musicians speak of the timeless beauty and transformative
power of his music. I believe these qualities have the ability to
transcend cultural boundaries and create a bond of shared community
among audience and performers alike.
But Wait, There’s More...
...More Bach, that is! Abberger joins his Tafelmusik Orchestra
and Choir compatriots in an exciting concert featuring J.S. Bach’s
Magnificat and Jan Dismas Zelenka’s extraordinary Missa Divi
Xaverii at Koerner Hall on May 9-12. The Magnificat is one of Bach’s
best-known small-scale choral works, shorter in duration than the
double cantatas but enormously wide-ranging in style and expression.
Jan Dismas Zelenka, likely a new name to many concertgoers,
is a perfect pairing for Bach, as his pieces are characterized by a very
daring compositional structure with a highly spirited harmonic invention
and complex counterpoint, providing a musical experience that is
simultaneously thrilling and uplifting.
Zelenka (1679-1745) was a Czech composer who was raised in
ELIZABETH DELAGE
30 | May 2019 thewholenote.com