New York Classical Review

The Sebastians, an elastic period-instruments ensemble sometimes heard with as few as four players, swelled its ranks to 19 musicians for an exciting traversal of all six of J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos Sunday afternoon at Good Shepherd-Faith Presbyterian Church.

The 19 didn’t all play at once. These touchstone works of the Baroque era were as diverse in their instrumentation as they were in musical style. One of them had no violins at all, just rich-toned violas and lower strings. In another one, virtuoso soloists on trumpet, oboe, recorder and violin jostled for attention. 

In yet another, hunting horns, a bassoon and an itty-bitty violin crashed the party. In still another, the composer called for two “echo recorders,” an instrument unknown to musicological science. (Alto recorders in F stood in for those, delightfully.)

As so often with Bach, one heard the styles of his era—the elegance of Lully, the fire of Vivaldi—colliding and mixing with visionary ideas, such as a keyboard cadenza that anticipated Mozart and Beethoven generations later.

A performance of all six concertos at one go was probably the furthest thing from Bach’s mind when he packaged these pieces up and sent them to the Margrave of Brandenburg in 1721. But programs like Sunday’s have become increasingly common, thanks to the breadth of Bach’s imagination, the tuneful counterpoint, and the fundamentally optimistic spirit of this music. (Each concerto has a brief slow movement in a minor key, the better to banish sad thoughts with a cheerful finale.)  And LP records and CDs have accustomed listeners to hearing everything, all at once.

Still, on Sunday one couldn’t escape a certain feeling of force-feeding, reinforced by uniformly fast tempos in both allegros and adagios. Liberating Baroque music from the draggy, monumental performances of earlier eras is a good thing, and there was a wonderful bounce to the bass lines of cellist Ezra Seltzer and violone player Nathaniel Chase that energized the higher instruments. One just wished for a few of those moments when time seems to stop and listeners can reflect on what they’ve heard.

But it was worth the effort to snatch the performances’ many beauties as they whizzed by. The concert began with a burst of energy in the Concerto No. 1 in F major, as the valveless horns of Megan Hurley and Rachel Nierenberg honked lustily one moment and matched the other instruments sixteenth note for sixteenth note the next. In contrast, keening oboes and vibratoless strings intensified the Adagio’s grinding dissonances.

The concerto closed with an extra movement, a French mini-suite of charming dances, with a minuet refrain whose tempo seemed pushed a little to give it a “finale” feeling. A complete reset after the preceding Allegro might have worked better.

Rearranging Bach’s order for effectiveness in performance, the concert continued with Concerto No. 6 in G major. Violists Jessica Troy and Kyle Miller brought incisive dialogue to their moment in the spotlight, as the ensemble throbbed beneath them in steady quarter notes. Here and in the dancing finale, this low-pitched music surged and ebbed like oceanic waves.

Soloists in Concerto No. 2 in F major were not just an odd couple, but an odd quartet. Trumpeter Caleb Hudson has (according to his bio) made a specialty of this piece’s extremely high, fast trumpet part—one is reminded of those coloratura sopranos who go from town to town singing Mozart’s Queen of the Night–and clearly has mastered not only its technical challenges but the art of playing well with lower-wattage instruments, in this case David Dickey’s piercing oboe, Priscilla Herreid’s creamy recorder and Isabelle Seula Lee’s warm-toned violin. All shone in individual solos, and, somewhat miraculously, as an ensemble.

Bach had to order the next concerto (in G major) No. 3, because everything else about it was threes—three violins, three violas, three cellos, plus basso continuo—and three was a religiously significant number for him. The nine string players were arranged in an arc around leader Jeffrey Grossman at the harpsichord, and it was a visual treat to watch a musical motive start at one end and ripple through the instruments like a wave. The fast first movement and the even faster finale in the style of a corrente showcased the players’ individual virtuosity and split-second ensemble timing.

The performance of Concerto No. 5 in D major was preceded by the installation of the harpsichord’s lid, a splendid two-panel affair painted with landscape scenes. This was necessary because the piece is history’s first keyboard concerto, complete with an elaborate solo cadenza to close the first movement, and the lid served to reflect the harpsichord’s delicate sound out to the audience.

Another “modern” feature of this work was the transverse (side-blown) flute, an innovation from France, distinguished on Sunday by David Ross’s glowing tone, expressive phrasing and delicacy in staccato passages. Violin soloist Nicholas DiEugenio blended tones ravishingly with the flute. Even with the lid, Grossman’s harpsichord didn’t match those instruments tonally, but made up for that with a cadenza whose roar of notes (okay, mini-roar) literally stopped the show.

The crisp, bright sound of recorders in the capable hands of Priscilla Herried and Gaia Saetermoe-Howard set the tone for the swinging opening of Concerto No. 4 in G major, with Daniel Lee’s silvery violin complementing their mellow, elegant phrases. The Andante was a pastorale à la Vivaldi, with the sonorous recorders drooping picturesquely in chromatic modulations. Virtuosity blossomed in the fugal finale, taken at a breathless clip that tested all the players, with Lee’s violin coming out on top—a final flourish to an afternoon of musical riches.

The Sebastians will perform Bach’s Mass in B minor with singers and instruments one to a part, 7:30 p.m. April 28 at St. Peter’s Church, 619 Lexington Ave. sebastians.org