Duo links Bach family to modern era
So what’s the deal with the harpsichord? Is it, as most of us assume, rooted in the music of the Baroque period? Well, yes. But can it make productive forays into the 20th century and beyond? Also, yes.
The point was neatly driven home on Thursday, Jan. 23, in a swift, enjoyable joint recital by harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani and violinist Stefan Jackiw. Appearing for just over an hour in Herbst Theatre to inaugurate San Francisco Performances’ fournight Pivot Festival, the duo shuttled back and forth between music of the past and of, if not the present, then at least the more recent past.
The evening’s revelation was the music of the Czech composer Viktor Kalabis, who died in 2006 at 83. Kalabis’ work doesn’t show up much on concert programs in this country, but Sonata for Violin and Harpsichord, which dates from 1975, turned out to be a work of considerable imagination and expressive fluidity.
It’s in three movements, but they’re so compactly drawn that the entire piece runs only 10 minutes. The music dips in and out of conventional tonality, devoting extended stretches to craggy, exploratory adventures before pausing briefly on a major or minor chord to regroup (the piece’s final cadence is especially touching in this regard).
What’s most interesting about the piece is the way Kalabis — whose wife, Zuzana Ruzickova, was an eminent harpsichordist — seems to pack a panoramic view of the instrument’s history into just a few pages of music. The spidery counterpoint of the first movement conjures up some of Bach’s gestural language without actually resembling his work in overt ways, and the central slow movement sets the two instruments in a delicate partnership reminiscent of a Baroque suite.
Something similar happened in Walter Piston’s 1945 Sonatina for Violin and Harpsichord, which concluded the program. As an American, Piston has a certain strain of John Philip Sousa in his stylistic thumbprint that would be completely foreign to Kalabis.
Otherwise, though, the two composers meet somewhere in the middle, as if engaged in a joint project to connect the 18th and 20th centuries through these instrumental sounds. Piston’s diminutive threemovement work brings the violin forward in the outer movements, allowing it to intone sustained melodies and jaunty little march tunes while the harpsichord buzzes along merrily in an accompanimental role. The richly expressive middle movement brings them into a closely considered dialogue, in which the spirit of Bach raises its head more than once.
Pairing these pieces with music from the Bach family, father and son, was the obvious move, yet it felt like anything but a foregone conclusion in Esfahani and Jackiw’s vivid and thoughtful performances. The Sonata No. 1 in B Minor by J.S. Bach led off the program in a rendition that moved with strong assurance between the tender interchanges of the two slow movements and the brisk rhythms of the matching fast movements.
Even more striking was C.P.E. Bach’s Sonata in B Minor, Wq. 76, marked by the composer’s trademark rhythmic vigor and rhetorical jolts. This is music that looks back to the father’s world while introducing all the strange innovations of the latter half of the 18th century, and Esfahani and Jackiw worked together to convey that duality in crisp relief.
The two composers meet somewhere in the middle, as if engaged in a joint project to connect the 18th and 20th centuries through these instrumental sounds.