Princeton Abbey,
Princeton, NJ. General Admission ($30.)
Artists (member of PF Baroque Orchestra)
Juan Carlos
Zamudio, violin; Reynaldo Patino, violin & viola; Maria Romero, violin
& viola; Anna Steinhoff, cello; Gregory Geehern, harpsichord.
Program
Harmonia
Artificioso-Ariosa, Partia V in G minor by Heinrich Biber (1644-1704).
Sonata Seconda
(a 2) in E minor by Johann Rosenmuller (1619-1684).
Herr, wenn ich nur dich hab G Major, BuxWV 38 by Dietrich Buxtehude
(1637-1707).
-
Evelyn
Johnson, soprano.
Cello Sonata No.
1 in G major by Domenico Gabrielli (1659-1690).
Trio Sonata, Op.
5, No. 1 in A major, HWV 396 by George Frideric Handel (1685-1759).
Divertimento in
B-flat major, K. 137 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791).
In an email
exchange with our friend David Y we found out about this Princeton Festival,
which bills itself as “NJ’s premier performance arts festival.” During the month of June multiple events
scheduled in the Princeton area include lectures, dances, jazz, baroque
concerts, a musical and an opera.
We decided to
sample the festival by buying tickets to this chamber concert, with musicians
from the PF Baroque Orchestra.
Other than
Handel and Mozart, all the composers were (mostly) seventeenth century figures,
a group to whom I have had only limited prior exposure. Turns out these were all well-known composers
of that period, and the selection traces an arc from Austria and Germany to
Italy. Regrettably I found out after the
concert as in the booklet they handed out at the concert there was no program
notes to be found.
At least from
what the bows looked like, the program was performed with period instruments
(of course some period instruments are being manufactured today.) One generally gets a more “country” (for lack
of a better description) tone out of these instruments. The other fact seems these instruments’
tuning drifts rather readily, there was a lot of tuning between pieces and movements.
The cello and
the harpsichord often acted as the basso continuo. It was interesting to hear in one piece (forget
which one) the continuous droning repetition of the cello of an ascending scale
that evoked the rhythmic equivalent in the snare drum in Ravel’s Bolero. (I did
some research as I was writing this, this occurred in the “Passacaglia”
movement of the Biber piece.) In general,
I was impressed with the competency required of the musicians, even though none
of the works can be considered “virtuoso” by today’s standards.
The musicians Maria Romero, Juan Carlos Zamudio, Gregory Geehern, Anna Steinhoff and
Reynaldo Patino taking a bow after the concert.
I was joking to
Anne that the program exhausted all the baroque music in the repertoire. That of course isn’t true. But it did give me all the baroque music I wanted
to hear in one sitting, even though the one hour program had pieces by Handel
and Mozart in it. Actually, if I had had
more time before the concert, and the inclination, it would be interesting to
try to analyze the structures of the pieces – that’s what I did as theory
students in college, after all.
It takes quite a
bit of chutzpah to bill oneself as a “premier” event, and I am not sure if this
is an expression of self-confidence, or simply a marketing trick. Certainly on the classical music side the
Festival provides a very limited glimpse, limited to the baroque period at that;
and I am not sure it can honestly bill itself as the “premier baroque”
event. Nor the “premier jazz,” “premier
musical,” for that matter.
From reading the
bios of the artists, there seem to be quite a few graduate students from
Indiana University.
The Festival
Book has the venue listed as the Princeton Abbey. The place now calls itself the Princeton
Abbey and Cemetery. It started in the
early 1900s as a Catholic Seminary, which eventually closed down in 1992. Recent zoning changes allow 12 acres be
turned into a cemetery and depository for cremated remains. The facility will be non-religious. There are no obvious crosses or other
Catholic references in the Abbey, although the stained glass windows continue
to depict people and events in the Bible, as far as I can tell. It isn’t air-conditioned, so felt a bit
stifling on this warm (not hot) but humid day.
The place was filled, about 150 people.
There will be a
concert by the full orchestra this coming Wednesday at the Princeton
Theological Seminary, we may go see it.
And we stayed in
the area so we could see the musical Man of La Mancha, but that is the subject
of the next blog entry.
No comments:
Post a Comment