Yesterday afternoon’s concert, the second in this year’s Summer Bach Festival presented by American Bach Soloists, saw the return of soprano Mary Wilson, this time singing a secular cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach was also represented on the program by his BWV 1067 (second) orchestral suite in B minor. Those offerings were complemented by two chamber music compositions by Georg Philipp Telemann.
However, the high point of the concert came at the very end of the program, which had been given the title The Harmonic Labyrinth. “Il Laberinto Armonico, facilus aditus, difficilis exitus” (the harmonic labyrinth, easy to enter, difficult to leave) is the last of the twelve concertos in the Opus 3 publication of Pietro Locatelli, which was given the title L’Arte del Violino. To be fair, there is no shortage of finger-busting virtuoso passages for the violinist throughout all of those concertos; but, when Locatelli got to the last to them, he really outdid himself. Last night the violinist that entered the labyrinth was YuEun Gemma Kim, and her performance was never anything less than dazzling.
Nevertheless, there was more to her performance than pulling technically challenging rabbits out of a hat. Kim also consistently brought expressiveness to her engagement with the ensemble in those passages that prepare the listener for the over-the-top cadenzas that Locatelli fashioned for each of the concerto’s three movements. In other words Kim worked intimately with the ensemble conducted by Jeffrey Thomas to make sure that this concerto would not be dismissed as a mere circus act, and the overall dispositions of the music were consistently engaging for the attentive listener.
Kim was also one of the four violinists to perform Telemann’s TWV 40:202 concerto for four violins in D major. Unlike the concertos for four violins in Antonio Vivaldi’s Opus 3 L’estro armonico (the harmonic inspiration), Telemann’s concerto was scored for four violins without an accompanying ensemble. Thus, Kim shared the stage only with the three other violinists: Jacob Ashworth, Tatiana Chulochnikova, and Tomà Iliev. As might be guessed, the sonorities were strikingly different from those of the “usual” string quartet. However, there was a transparency to the account provided by these four violinists, allowing the attentive listener to appreciate not only the entire fabric but also the subtleties of each individual thread.
The other Telemann selection was a quartet that he called a quartet, the TWV 43:D3 “Paris” quartet in D major. Iliev was the only violinist in this ensemble, joined by Sandra Miller on flute, Kenneth Slowik on gamba, and Corey Jamason on harpsichord. This provided an engaging blend of sonorities that complemented Miller’s performance in Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1067 (second) orchestral suite in B minor, which can almost be taken as a concerto for flute and orchestra.
The other Bach selection was the BWV 202 “Wedding” cantata Weichet nur, betrübte Schatten (dissipate, you troublesome shadows). Wilson was clearly more comfortably situated with this music than she had been with the early Handel selections she performed on Saturday night. The sequence of arias also provided her with opportunities to engage with instrumental solos for both oboe (Stephen Hammer) and violin (Chulochnikova). This was the opening selection on last night’s program, and it provided a thoroughly engaging “welcoming gesture” for the stimulating instrumental offerings that would follow.
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