Oct. 30--Chicago audiences have had to bide their time before hearing the Bach Collegium Japan in concert.
The esteemed ensemble, founded in Japan in 1990 by conductor and keyboardist Masaaki Suzuki, has pioneered period-instrument performances throughout that nation. Although he has been bringing a touring version of the collegium to New York and elsewhere in the U.S. since the early 2000s, the group's had not appeared in the Chicago area until Thursday night's concert at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel at the University of Chicago, part of the UChicago Presents early music series.
The players' global reputation as interpreters of J.S. Bach's music has been firmly established by their recordings, on the BIS label, of the complete Bach church cantatas, a monumental undertaking Suzuki and friends began in 1995 and completed last year. So it seemed fitting that their program of Baroque instrumental and vocal works on Thursday should be anchored by one of the greatest and best-known of the composer's sacred works, Cantata No. 51 ("Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen").
While the chapel's architectural magnificence and spiritual aura make the space a modern analog to Bach's own Thomaskirche in Leipzig, Germany, Rockefeller's swimmy acoustics can be problematic for performers, especially newcomers unfamiliar with its sonic quirks.
One could trace the collegium's growing confidence and security in dealing with those quirks as its program progressed. But the inescapable fact was that Rockefeller is too large a space for an ensemble numbering only 10 instrumentalists and one singer. The university's Logan Center Performance Hall would have suited them and their music better.
The opening Bach "Brandenburg" Concerto No. 2 thus amounted to a dicey acoustical shakedown. From his command post at the harpsichord, Suzuki did his best to enforce crisp ensemble playing and proper balances. But musical dialogues across the wide altar kept threatening to come unglued, recorder player Andreas Bohlen was only faintly audible and Guy Ferber faltered a couple of times while negotiating the treacherous high-wire passages Bach assigned to the valveless, clarino trumpet.
Matters improved for two Vivaldi woodwind concertos, both in C major -- one for recorder, strings and continuo (RV 443), the other for oboe and strings (RV 450).
The delicate chirpings of Bohlen's recorder registered better against the sparer accompaniment of only four strings and harpsichord, his remarkable breath control allowing him to articulate high-speed runs and sustain the lyrical Largo in fine order.
Even better were the feats of rapid staccato playing and rhythmic dexterity that Baroque oboist Masamitsu San'Nomiya achieved in the oboe concerto. That instrument had a more penetrating sound than the soft-timbred recorder -- or, for that matter, the wooden transverse flute of Kiyomi Suga, whose proficient playing of Bach's Sonata in E minor for flute and continuo (BWV 1034) could not overcome the dampening effect of the room acoustics: For long stretches of the piece her sound simply disappeared within the continuo.
Fortunately British soprano Joanne Lunn, a frequent soloist with the collegium, has the kind of bright, focused sound that carries well in "wet" sonics like Rockefeller's, and she made the evening's two vocal works, Handel's "Gloria" and the Bach "Jauchzet Gott," the highlights of the evening.
Scholarly opinion is rather divided as to whether Handel actually composed the "Gloria," an exultant, compact hymn of praise whose manuscript surfaced in a London music library in 2001. Whether it's "authentic" or not, it certainly sounds like prime Handel, and its joyous strains could have been made to order for Lunn's voice and artistry.
Here, and in Bach's Cantata No 51, the freshness and purity of her singing were a model of High Baroque vocal style, and her ecstatic facial expression mirrored the joy she expressed through her vocalism. Joining her for the opening aria and closing "Allelujah" of the cantata was Ferber, rock-solid in the obbligato trumpet part, using a bigger instrument than the small coiled clarino he employed for the "Brandenburg" concerto. The nine musicians, with Suzuki leading from the chamber organ console, came through admirably.
There was more Bach praising God's grace in the single encore: the aria "Wie freudig ist mein Herz," from Cantata No. 199 ("Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut"), beautifully sung by Lunn, with San'Nomiya on obbligato oboe.
jvonrhein@tribpub.com
