Stream: SCO - Schop, Telemann, Muffat, Biber, Froberger and Bach

A few years ago at the Paxton House Festival I heard the SCO Wind Ensemble give a most enjoyable performance.  With nine players, this was the largest musical group the chamber music festival had hosted. They made a fine noise together, but they could also include in their programme works for smaller groupings. We’ve seen a number of these medium sized bands in the SCO’s online concerts this year.  It’s a useful size for a socially distanced performance in a small hall and enables the orchestra to explore less well-known repertoire.   

This concert features six composers mostly from the earlier baroque period, each represented by one work.  Brian Schiele viola, a weel-kent face from the SCO and Mr McFall’s Chamber, has worked with Jan Waterfield, who plays harpsicord and chamber organ, to choose the music, for which they provide succinct introductions.  

There are several threads running though the choice of pieces.  Nearly all of the composers were great travellers, learning their craft as instrumentalists and composers in different parts of Europe, and so helping to promulgate interesting ideas and new techniques.  Johann Schop (c1590-1667) worked in Copenhagen at the Danish court before returning to Germany.  A virtuosic violinist, he pioneered new techniques, and into a seemingly sombre short dance suite he introduces unexpectedly lively rhythms.   All nine musicians play here, and their unorthodox ensemble indicates another link: they feature lower register instruments.  Schiele refers to a rule of five – two violins and three violas.  To this is added a cello, a double bass, a bassoon and a chamber organ, played by Jan Waterfield. This provides a deep and noticeably “different” texture to most of the music played. 

The smaller forces for the second dance suite, Muffet’s Floriligeum Primum, also favour the lower instruments, with one violin, three violas and bassoon. Georg Muffet, (1653-1740) who had Scots ancestors as his name suggests, was a self-declared internationalist. He was born in Savoy and worked in Paris, possibly with Lully, and in Alsace.  He wrote “Since I combine the French manner with the German and Italian styles, I perhaps help to achieve a desirable concord between peoples”  His suite of seven dance movements foreshadows the preferred structure for many later baroque works, providing opportunities for faster and slower pieces, and dances associated with different nationalities. 

Stuttgart-born Froberger 1614-1667, another traveller, wrote Toccata II, for harpsicord, an ornate piece, played here with great aplomb by Jan Waterfield. 

The third suite by Georg Biber (1644-1704) features innovative string techniques.  Written for eight players, it contains two movements featuring plucked strings, played con testudo – literally like a tortoise - in which the violins and violas are held like lutes against the body.  The Night Watchman was written in 1670, and to the more cheerful sound of baroque dances is added a song, based, Biber said, on the genuine cries of a watchman, as he calls time on night activities, and sends the revellers off to bed.  The lute-like accompaniment works well, against the simple baritone song.   

The Biber song is one of baritone, Marcus Farnsworth’s three arias.  Working for the first time with the SCO, he’s had a fine international career which included his Ned Keene in the memorable Bergen Philharmonic Peter Grimes at the 2017 Edinburgh Festival.  His other contributions here share a penitential mood.  The concert was recorded on 21st March, and the Telemann Cantata, ‘So grausum mächtig ist der Teufel’ (So gruesomely powerful is the Devil) was written for the third Sunday in Lent.  It is in three short parts.   In the first the narrator explores the devil’s wiles, which he thinks he will be unable to resist.  In the recitative he gathers his strength, and finally with Christ’s help finds the courage to defy the embodiment of evil.  The accompaniment by five players (violin, viola, cello bassoon and harpsicord) again emphasises the lower notes. The hectic pace of the first section has fast passages in the strings and bassoon to indicate the singer’s fear.  After the recitative, accompanied by harpsicord and cello, a jauntier pace and more confident tune in the violin heralds his renewed strength of purpose.  The powerful direct text and theme recalls John Bunyan’s hymn ‘To Be A Pilgrim’.  Both relish the sounds of words such as “Hobgoblin and foul fiend” and “seine Klauen” (claws).  I assume that the vernacular tradition from 15th and 16th century translations of the bible affected the language of sacred music and devotional prose in both countries.  The Pilgrim’s Progress, the Messiah and Bach’s Passions have much in common with this short cantata, which Farnsworth sings without a score and with great authority.  

The second of these Lenten themed songs is the final piece in the concert.  Johann Christoph Bach (1642-1703) was J.S.Bach’s father’s cousin, and unlike the other composers remained all his life working on court and church music in Eisenach.  This ‘Lamento: Ach daβ ich Wassers g’nug hätte’ (Oh that I had enough water) is a sombre personal reflection on sin.   Scored again for the lower instruments with three violas, the cello, a double bass, pipe organ and bassoon, it’s an intense, slow piece.  The baritone’s melody is echoed by the violin, played by Stephanie Gonley, and occasionally by the violas, with interesting, sometimes discordant harmonies provided by the other instruments.  Farnsworth again singing without a score, focuses on the personal nature of the text, with shorter, breathier phrasing in the repetitions in the first lines, as if he struggles to make his confession.  The words ‘Mein Sünde’ (my sins) are on long notes at the end of sections.  The middle section has some elaboration on the melody, with runs, and some grace notes for singer and strings, but then we return to the solemn controlled theme of the first section. 

This SCO concert has provided much enjoyment and food for thought in its short pieces.  I found the two cantatas sung by Marcus Farnsworth an exciting discovery and have gone back to listen again to both.   

As always, the introductions by the musicians in the recording are clearly presented, and they and the online programme notes by David Kettle are an essential companion to the concert.  SCO concerts are provided free online. 

Available to watch for free on YouTube. Please consider a donation to the SCO to enable them to continue to provide their online content.