A glorious marathon’s worth of J.S. Bach

RIGA - Albert Einstein once made his preference for Bach quite clear: ‘’I feel uncomfortable listening to Beethoven,” he stated. “I think he is too personal, almost naked. Give me Bach, rather, and then more Bach.’’
For anyone sharing Einstein’s voracious appetite for Bach, Riga was the place to be last Saturday, with the city’s first ever Bach Music Marathon taking place on 28 March at the Jazeps Vitols’ Latvian Academy of Music.
The event concluded the Bach Music Week, which was put on by the organisers of the 15th International Bach Chamber Music Festival — an annual festival which takes place each year in November.
The start of Bach Music week coincided nicely with the third European Day of Early Music on March 21. This is also the birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach, whose music is revered for its technical command, artistic beauty, and intellectual depth. Many other great names in classical music revered Bach, ranging from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who stated on hearing a Bach motet in Leipzig that ‘’now there is music from which a man can learn something’’,  to composer Richard Wagner — who from 1837 at the age of 24, spent two years as chief conductor of  the Riga City Theatre. Wagner even went so far as referring to Bach as ‘’the most stupendous miracle in all music’’.
This year’s Bach Music Marathon’s six concerts, performed in quick succession in over the course of 10 hours, was not about performing miracles. Few listeners at Saturday’s performances could possibly have emerged with a complete understanding of Johann Sebastian Bach’s profoundly logical mathematical principles, for instance, where every note he composed can be slotted neatly into his rational and consistent system — a system which has led history books to insist that Bach  ‘’invented’’ musical grammar. That would be too ambitious, especially with leading British conductor and a scholar of Bach Christopher Hogwood, going so far as to claim that ‘’trying to make sense of Bach without knowing what was in his world is a compromise’’.
Instead, the main aim of the Bach Marathon in Riga was, according to the marathon’s director Aina Kalnciema, to give the public ‘’the opportunity to perceive each artist’s unique understanding of Bach’s pieces and to compare various interpretations of this immortal music.” Kalnciema was inspired to develop a Bach Music Marathon in Riga after attending a similar Bach Marathon in Budapest, where the event attracted much interest from the vast audiences attending the concerts.

The intent to bring each artist’s understanding of Bach to the Latvian public is certainly commendable. Early modern music is indeed a central part of our shared cultural heritage as Europeans - a thought reinforced by the former European Commissioner for Culture, Androulla Vassiliou, when she stated on the European Day of Early Music last year that ‘’it is a powerful symbol of our civilization, and our common European identity. The European Commission has been supporting the European Network for Early Music, and remains fully committed to maintaining and reinforcing its support of culture and the arts. “
Throughout the day during the Bach Music Marathon, listeners were introduced to different aspects of Bach’s musical heritage as well as to a great versatility of musical instruments. The Marathon took off with an impressive opening concert of organ music presented to the public by concert organist and president of the Latvian Guild of organists, Vita Kalnciema. Kalnciema played an active role in presenting organ performances during Riga’s 800th Anniversary in 2001, having initiated the “Golden Treasury of Latvian Organ Music” series of concerts, which ran for several seasons.  Her newest CD of organ music will feature her performing  on the historical  1701 baroque organ of Ugale, a  village in the Latvian region of Western Kurzeme. This organ,  Kalnciema has stated, is “the most valuable pipe organ in Latvia.’’
Kalnciema’s organ concert was followed by a concert by the distinguished harpsichordist Ieva Saliete. Saliete undertook historic keyboard studies of Historical Keyboard Instruments, Performance Practice and Chamber Music at the Hochschule fur Musik in Freiburg, Germany. Kalnciema has performed at concerts with some of Europe’s leading early music ensembles: the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, “Ensemble 415”, and the Basel Chamber Orchestra.
The third Bach Music Marathon concert, which commenced in the early afternoon, offered the general public the great opportunity to listen to the combined  artistic collaboration of German conductor and music professor Jorg Peter Weigle, and the choir of Jazeps Vītols’ Latvian Academy of Music. Weigle  served as Rector of Hans Eisler Academy of Music (Berlin). Notable career highlights for Weigle include his role as a regular conductor of the Leipzig Radio Choir, of which he became chief conductor in  1985.
 Weigle was also principal conductor of the Dresden Philharmonic from 1986 to 1994, and General Musical Director of the Stuttgart Philharmonic from 1995 to 2002. It was good news to hear that Weigle will also be working intensively with the choir of Jazeps Vitols’ Latvian Academy of Music in an upcoming series of masterclasses on the interpretation of performance style and technique in Bach’s works.
Though their initial meeting did bring out differences in interpretation, “The choir worked extremely hard and performed exceptionally well and it was a pleasure to have worked with them,’’ said Wiegle. Bach wrote six motets for choir without instruments, and three were performed at the concert, with the remaining part of the programme comprising works by Peter Cornelius and Max Reger. ‘’An all-Bach program of his motets would have been too heavy for the choir,’’ Weigle said.
The Bach Music Marathon concluded with a final concert in the evening where the JVLAM student orchestra performed the Bach violin concerto with string orchestra and basso continuo in A minor, together with violin soloist Eva Bindere, who is also one of the first violinists of the Kremerata  Baltica, and whose CD ‘’After Mozart’’ where she performed as soloist received a Grammy Award. Bach’s concerto for 2 Harpsichords string orchestra, and his basso continuo in C major, were performed with Andrej Osokin and Sergej  Osokin, performing on piano. “Bach is the start of everything. His music transforms itself through time, and it never loses the sense of today. It remains modern even to this day. Mozart was, as we all know, a genius, but Bach is different, his music goes directly to your heart’’ said Bindere.
It was a marathon which included many highlights. But both Bindere’s solo violin performance and Weigle’s choir concert saw both artists breathe through their phrasing an understanding of Bach that endeavoured to enter into Bach’s very soul, giving intoxicating interpretations of their very own which were both electrifying and shrouded with great respect for a fellow musician.
The string ensemble which accompanied Bindere was tight, producing the illusion that no one was following anyone else. Bach once stated that ‘’I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well’’. One could sense that the choir of Jazeps Vitols’ Latvian Academy of Music had worked hard, and were now intending to enjoy the fruit of their hard work, expressing through their voices  and their presence on stage a communion of musical fellowship between Bach, themselves and the audience.
The Bach Music Week celebrated an important part of Europe’s cultural heritage, it brought Bach’s music back to life, not only for the purposes of enjoyment, education, and celebration; but also for developing an understanding of European cultural history; and, equally importantly, as was clear from seeing the LMT Hall of  Jazeps Vitols’ Latvian Academy of Music filled with so many young people, transmitting the miracles of Bach’s early music to future generations of concert goers and performers.