J. S. Bach
Sonatas for Violin and Keyboard

* Sonata No. 1 in a, BWV 1014
* Sonata No. 2 in A, BWV 1015
* Sonata No. 3 in E, BWV 1016
* Sonata No. 4 in c, BWV 1017
* Sonata No. 5 in f, BWV 1018
* Sonata No. 6 in G, BWV 1019

Mela Tenenbaum (violin), Richard Kapp (piano)
Total time: 38:43 + 44:57 (2 CDs)
ESS.A.Y CD1066/67

Summary for the Busy Executive: Bach with an edge.

This set also comes in a violin-harpsichord version (ESS.A.Y CD 1064/65),
with keyboardist Gerald Ranck.  If you buy the piano set, you can get the
harpsichord set for an additional $8.00 by filling out a form provided with
the album.  The liner notes, by Kevin Bazzana, indicate that Tenenbaum
performs on a different violin as well and that one gets the opportunity
to hear how differences in the instrumental forces lead to differences
in interpretation - a position I should not have thought controversial.

Bazzano, however, makes a great point right away: "With apologies to the
National Rifle Association:  instruments don't play music; people do." The
fetishist weed of the HIP (historically-informed performance) movement
regarding "authentic" instruments as the single path to glory, to the
extent that it has risen, needs a thorough rooting.  To my mind, you judge
a result, and the preliminaries only in light of the result.  I've seen
great cooks make bizarre ingredients yield fabulous dishes.  Similarly,
I've heard great Bach on piano and on harpsichord, on modern violins and
on instruments built according to Baroque principles.  In each case, a
great musician commanded the instrument.

I admire Mela Tenenbaum's playing enormously and thinks she deserves wider
recognition.  I've reviewed her recording of Bach's solo violin partitas
and sonatas (ESS.A.Y CD 1049-50-51) and concluded that, within the context
of the Russian school of violin playing, she had acquitted herself well,
even against the file of great names like Milstein, Heifetz, and so on.
No single musician pronounces the final word on Bach.  You savor the
individuality of a good interpretation.

Such a proposition holds true not only for a cultural monument like the
solo sonatas and partitas, but also for the more "sociable" accompanied
sonatas.  Here, however, we must take care not to undervalue the
accompanied sonatas.  Bach characteristically put tremendous craft into
just about everything he wrote.  Even "routine" Bach probably stands head
and shoulders above the best nearly everybody else, and, to that extent,
Bach is both the idol and the despair of so many composers.  The third
movement of BWV 1015, for example, which (if you don't pay close attention)
sounds like a typical 18th-century slow aria, actually proceeds as a strict
canon between the violin and the keyboard's upper line, and almost every
movement in the series bristles with "invertible" counterpoint (where the
upper line gets music originally assigned to the lower line, and vice
versa), stretto (where one voice takes up a line before another finishes),
fugato - a full contrapuntal toolkit, in short - mainstays of Bach's
practice.  Counterpoint alone, however, doesn't make a great piece.  Bach
invents new turns, elevates and extends the expressive power of standard
forms, and creates a musical poetry that speaks to the body, the heart,
and the mind all at once - all without the apparent self-consciousness of
composers from Beethoven on (Schiller's "naive" vs.  "sentimental" artist).
Bach, like Shakespeare, apparently "just writes," and everything falls into
place within a complex whole.

The usual resort to contrapuntal building - an extreme independence of each
line - implies a balance between the players other than the usual violin
discreetly "supported" by the keyboard.  Violin, keyboard left hand, and
keyboard right hand work really as equals.  The violinist can't treat these
sonatas as Locatellian tours de force.  The keyboardist must also command
attention.  Indeed, violinist and keyboard player must learn an intricate
dance in which one gets out of the other's way.  In Bach's music, this kind
of switching occurs frequently.  Kapp and Tenenbaum occasionally run into
trouble (as in the second adagio of the fifth sonata), with Tenenbaum too
aggressive and Kapp too shy, but it's a rare occasion.

Tenenbaum knows this music inside-out.  Her performance shows a fresh
thinking-through of every movement.  You may not agree with what she comes
up with in each case, but, if you know these works at all, you'll find
yourself comparing her interpretations in detail with other violinists'.
I compared her to Buswell (with Valenti, harpsichord) and Ritchie (with
Wright, harpsichord).  Buswell plays the sonatas as close to dances as
possible, and I admit my sympathy with this approach, just as I prefer
Italianate, as opposed to Germanic, performances of the cantatas.  Ritchie,
dean of Baroque fiddle technique, takes a relatively sober approach,
unfortunately, not really what the music needs.  To me, Bach's music tends
to heaviness as one of its traps.  It's not all that much of a stretch to
give a sober, lugubrious performance - not that Ritchie's performance
plods.  In fact, it's a very lyrical reading, full of chiaroscuro.
However, I want more pep, more kicking up of the heels.

Tenenbaum has vim and vigor to burn.  The quick movements suit her,
and she eagerly leaps into a phrase as if she can't wait to get to the
next.  Listeners will, I suspect, find her slow, singing movements more
controversial, however.  She sings, but not necessarily sweetly.  An uneasy
current of nervous intensity marks her adagios and largos.  There is a
slowing down, but neither respite nor repose.  Her playing in that regard
reminds me a bit of the cellist Maisky - both Byronic and, to some extent,
extreme (Tenenbaum less than Maisky), in the sense of the phrase "extreme
sports." These performances galvanize so, I found it hard to listen to more
than two sonatas at a time.  If one gulps down Buswell's readings like
popovers or contemplates Arcadian visions with Ritchie, the listener hangs
on for dear life in Tenenbaum's whirls (listen to the final "Presto" in the
fourth sonata) and hold's one's breath waiting for Grendel to leap out and
eat somebody in the slow movements.  It's only a slight overstatement.

I happen to like these accounts very much.  They are the products
of an individual, mature, and strong musical mind, an antidote to the
aesthetically safe and correct we get all too often.  If I prefer her
minor-key sonatas to her major-keys, it's because I think the temperament
she reveals through her playing more serious than light-hearted.
Nevertheless, it's a strong set, highlighted, for me, by the last three
sonatas.

The performers seemed a bit too forward in the sound image.  Sometimes, as
in the third movement of the Sonata No.  6, for solo keyboard, I felt as if
my head lay practically inside the instrument, but that's my only carp.
Most of the time, the sound is fine.

Steve Schwartz