Bach & Enescu program notes
Karen Bentley Pollick, violin
Sunday, September 30, 2018
2:00 pm
Seattle Central Library
Microsoft Audiorium
Johann Sebastian Bach: Toccata and Fugue in A minor BWV 565 (1703 – 1707)
transcribed by Jaap Schroeder in 1989
George Enescu: Airs dans le genre roumain (1926)
Moderato (molto rubato) – Allegro giusto – Andante – Tempo di Hora – Allegro giocoso
Sarabanda (c. 1910 -1915)
Impressions en style roumain le 5 septembre 1925
Andante – Tempo di Hora – Allegretto piacevole – Allegro
discovered and reconstructed by Sherban Lupu
Johann Sebastian Bach: Partita #2 in D minor BWV 1004 (1718 – 1720)
Allemande
Corrente
Sarabanda
Giga
Ciaccona
video by Stuart Diamond (2017)
Airs dans le genre roumain (1926) by George Enescu
Featured on the premiere recording by Sherban Lupu ’George Enescu: The Unknown Enescu’, Airs dans le genre roumain offers a lexicon of folk fiddling with a raft of bent notes, harmonics, double-stopping and luscious glissandi alternating between soulful lyrical movements, Hora dances, and lively “lautar” fiddling in the faster movements.
Sarabanda (1915) by George Enescu
Among Enescu’s manuscripts Sherban Lupu found this sketch of a Sarabande written in the style of those from the Bach Partitas for solo violin, which Enescu played so masterly. The theme and the melodic content of the piece, as well as its rich harmonies, melismatic ornamentation and modulations seem to be inspired from folklore. Enescu marks fingerings that indicate color changes. Undated, the score seems to be related to his Suite No. 1 for orchestra, therefore it was probably written somewhere between 1910 and 1915.
Impressions en style roumain le 5 septembre 1925 by George Enescu
Dated 5 September, 1925 these little tunes, de facto “impressions” of Romanian folk music, written like the “Airs in Romanian style” the year before Enescu composed the monumental Third Sonata, op. 25 for violin and piano, were probably intended as preparatory exercises for the latter. Enescu never used real folk themes in his compositions, considering them “too perfect to tamper with”, therefore he “invented” folk-like tunes. From these sketches Sherban Lupu was able to etch out and develop a suite of four contrasting movements for solo violin full of lyrical passion and flamboyant virtuosity typical of the playing style of the “lautars” (fiddlers) of Moldavia. Therefore they must played “molto rubato” with much freedom in an improvisational style. Some of the ornamentations and glissandi were indicated by Enescu himself. Consequently, the similar style of writing was maintained by Lupu in his arrangement.
Partita #2 in D minor BWV 1004 (1718 – 1720) by Johann Sebastian Bach
For centuries, scholars have puzzled over what appear to be mathematical structures embedded in the Ciaccona. The pillars of sonic architecture are cast in three distinct sections that unfold in sets of variations over the same bass line in a triple meter with a Sarabande rhythm. The first section in D minor is comprised of 33 variants, the second section in D Major consists of 19 repetitions, and the third section returns to the home key of D minor with 12 variations. Do the proportions between the Minor and Major modes, the number and nature of variations, and how they interchange, reflect some deeper mathematical or even cosmic meaning? Some suggest that the almost perfect proportions of the 64 variations presented in three contrasting sections mirror The Golden Ratio – a set of satisfying proportions that underlie masterpieces of architecture, paintings, and even in nature itself. That in some way, Bach’s genius allowed him to intuit the very nature of reality, and that his creative mind was so attuned to his own essence that the music he wrote exemplified these structural truths.
Or such conjecture could simply be the arbitrary musings of academics – philosophical meditations that have little to do with the art of a workaday composer, who wrote the work in grief, and perhaps tribute, after returning from a trip to discover that his wife (and the mother of seven of his children) had died.
The visuals fuse geometrical and mathematical representations of The Golden Mean, Fibonacci Series, Pyramids of Egypt, as well as the Greek letter “φ“ that has come to represent this Divine Ratio, creating a tribute to Bach’s own motto “Soli Deo Gloria”.