Bach: Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin. Tomás Cotik, violin.
Centaur. $16 (2 CDs).
Ned Rorem/McNeil Robinson: Improvisations on the
Fourteen Stations of the Cross. McNeil Robinson, organ. Delos. $14.98.
The notion that Baroque music is bland and
emotionless, to be performed metronomically and with a focus purely on form, is
an old but long-discredited one that becomes harder and harder to imagine
anyone ever believing each time a new and excellent recording of a staple of
the Baroque repertoire emerges. Tomás Cotik is the latest performer to lay to
rest the old canards about the Baroque, doing so in a highly thoughtful and
thoroughly satisfying recording of Bach’s Sonatas
and Partitas for Solo Violin – in which Cotik makes some highly personalized
decisions about playing the music. The result of those decisions is a hybrid
performance: Baroque bow, modern violin, softer-than-usual strings, tuning to
today’s 440 Hz rather than the 415 Hz common in Bach’s time (although at that
time there were actually many different “A” tunings in use). The underlying
reasons for Cotik’s various decisions are part of a series of ongoing
musical/academic debates/discussions that are unlikely ever to lead to
consensus. For instance, Cotik’s near-complete lack of vibrato is not only
historically correct but also a function of the Baroque bow itself: it simply
is not possible to produce modern-style near-constant vibrato with it.
Similarly, the way Cotik brings forth the lightness and dancelike elements of
these works is due in part to the bow’s characteristics, which make those
effects easier to achieve than they are with a modern bow. The actual sound of
the music is partly a function of using A440 rather than A415, which is a
semitone lower: this tuning decision is very much a matter of taste, since
performers accustomed to more-modern music may actually have difficulty playing
in a way that sounds constantly a semitone flat to them. But all these
elements, as interesting as they can be to the analytically inclined, take a
back seat to the basic question of how the music sounds at any given time. And
in Cotik’s hands (and beneath his fingers), it sounds very fine indeed. There
is a sprightliness about these performances that is immediately winning, and at
the same time there is all the seriousness one might wish for in the deeper and
more-complex movements. The famed Chaconne
of Partita No. 2 is lighter than usual but scarcely ebullient, its contrapuntal
complexity highlighted by the care with which Cotik brings out its various
components. To cite just one other example, the highly complex Fuga of Sonata No. 3, which leans (among
other things) on the performer’s ability to perform quadruple stops, is neither
heavy nor academic-sounding here, and its considerable length (only the Chaconne is longer) makes complete sense
as a way to work through its musical arguments and overall development. Cotik,
who uses less ornamentation than do many other performers, allows emotion into
the music as appropriate, as in the openings of all three sonatas and in the
two sarabandes (in Partitas Nos. 1 and 2); he also permits, even encourages
matters to become almost frothy in some of the quick sections (Presto of Sonata No. 1, Gigue of Partita No. 3). What is evident
throughout this Centaur recording is that Cotik has thought long and hard about
every aspect of playing this music, from where to follow historically informed
practice closely (and where not to) to when to show the music’s emotive power
(and when to keep matters much more restrained). There is no “best” recording
of these works – and no definitive way to answer the many questions they pose
for performer and listener alike. There are, however, many excellent approaches
to the music, each convincing on its own terms. Cotik’s are very decidedly
within that distinguished group.
There are two distinguished musical
figures involved in a new Delos release of Improvisations
on the Fourteen Stations of the Cross: Ned Rorem (born 1923), whose themes
are the basis of the performance, and McNeil Robinson (1943-2015), the
distinguished organist whose March 21, 2006 improvisations are recorded and
memorialized on the disc. Readings of text introduce each of the 14 tracks,
setting a scene that Robinson interprets and realizes with consummate skill:
the “falling” nature of the music in “Jesus falls for the first time” paints a
very clear picture of the stumble, for example, while the portentous, echoing
dissonances of “Jesus is nailed to the Cross” are simultaneously dramatic and
heartfelt. Robinson brings forth considerable tenderness when it is called for,
as in “Jesus meets his afflicted mother” before the crucifixion and in “The
body of Jesus is placed in the arms of his mother” after it. The concluding
“Jesus is laid in the tomb” is suitably solemn, but what comes through most
clearly and affectingly in this music is the extent to which this is a human story rather than (or in addition
to) a divine one – as in “Veronica wipes the face of Jesus,” to which Robinson
gives great tenderness, and “Jesus is stripped of his garments,” whose
exclamatory passages here seem indicative of all-too-human greed rather than a
customary rite of Roman times that is given scriptural significance in the New
Testament. Robinson himself surely saw these improvisations and much of his
other musical work as serving a spiritual purpose: he was organist and choirmaster at the Church of St. Mary the
Virgin for two decades, organist at the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York City
from 1965 until 2012, and also served as organist of the Park Avenue Christian
Church. But equally surely, Robinson saw improvisation – at which he was highly
skilled – as a purely musical matter, one that could connect listeners with
something beyond themselves even without the necessity of conformity to
religious orthodoxy. It was on this basis that he served as chairman of the
organ departments at the Mannes College of Music and Manhattan School of Music.
Improvisations on the Fourteen Stations of the
Cross
partakes of several elements of Robinson’s life: his sheer musical ability, the
quality of his improvisational thinking and playing, and his knowledge of ways
to connect the higher purpose of religion with the mundane elements of human
life – including the human life of Jesus – in ways that reach out equally to
firm believers and to those of less faith or none. This is a very moving CD, as
well as one whose musical quality pervades the material and stands, as a
result, as a suitable monument to Robinson’s persuasive skill.
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