Jacobs’ historic Bach recreation looks back in Leipzig
According to most accounts, the credit for bringing the music of J.S. Bach out of obscurity to a wider listening public goes to Felix Mendelssohn, who led a historic performance of the St. Matthew Passion in Berlin in 1829.
He didn’t stop there; another highlight of Mendelssohn’s lifelong Bach campaign was a recital of the old composer’s works on the organ of Bach’s own church, the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, in 1840.
On Tuesday, in the second of his two all-Bach programs this month, organist Paul Jacobs re-enacted that 1840 recital on the organ of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin. As it happened, Mendelssohn’s selection for that historic night was studded with works that would become all-time hits, concluding with the now-ubiquitous Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565. Jacobs didn’t just do them justice—he conveyed a sense of the awe these works must have struck in listeners hearing them for the first time.
One thinks of Mendelssohn as a precocious genius at everything musical, but one thing he was late getting around to was playing the organ. According to David Crean’s engaging program notes, Leipzig’s most famous musical citizen practiced so obsessively for his Thomaskirche recital debut–especially learning how to play the pedals—that he described himself as “walk[ing] along the street in nothing but organ passages.”
On Tuesday, it was evident that Paul Jacobs had figured out the pedals and everything else about the St. Mary’s organ, designed by G. Donald Harrison and originally installed in 1933 as (the dedication said) “a return to the principles of the ‘classic’ organ, the organ of the Thomas-Kirche and of the older French and German builders.”
Under Jacobs’s hands and feet, that classic sound included marvelous subtleties of tone color ranging from the breathiest flutes to the most piercing reeds, as well as some unearthly sounds no other non-electronic instrument makes.
The “wet” acoustics of the church’s stone interior always threatened to blur details in the music, but a combination of one’s ears adapting and Jacobs’s transparent registration saved the day. And final chords—especially the fortissimo ones–lasted a deliciously long time after they were released. (No doubt that’s why the organist requested that the audience hold applause until the end of the entire program—not an easy thing to do after, for example, the digital pyrotechnics and massive finish of the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 582.)
The recital got off to a hearty start with the splendid Prelude and Fugue in E-flat major, BWV 552, known in English-speaking countries as “St. Anne” because its fugue subject resembles the hymn tune by that name (“Our God, our help in ages past”). The prelude began in stately French-overture style, though with a lung power Louis XIV could scarcely have imagined, and proceeded to trip the light fantastic, then whirl away in fast triplets before closing with trumpet blasts.
Bach (and Jacobs) topped the spectacular prelude with a triple fugue in five voices, whose dancing third subject in the pedals was no doubt what sent Mendelssohn cantering down that Leipzig street.
The program retreated into contemplation with the Chorale-Prelude “Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele,” BWV 654, its hymn melody floating in a vox-humana solo over a soft undulation of low flutes.
Emerging from this quiet place, the Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV 543, stole in softly at first with rippling figures, but then a pedal stampede touched off a storm of arpeggios. Vivaldi’s fiery influence continued in the fugue subject’s imitation of rapid string-crossing—tricky on a violin but natural for two feet on organ pedals—as well as the perpetual-motion triplets and the chopped-off final chord.
Jacobs made the opening of the great C minor Passacaglia and Fugue as crepuscular as possible, the ominous ground bass stealing in softly, the first variations seeming to rise from the ooze. The music swelled gradually amid swirling figurations, thinned to a pianissimo tissue of staccato flutes, then built again to a roar, adding stops all the way.
The passacaglia’s ground theme returned as the main subject of the double fugue, with another “string-crossing” theme as countersubject, in a potent brew clarified by Jacobs’s bright yet beefy registration.
The program again escaped to another world with the Pastorale in F major, BWV 590, a suite in four brief movements where overtone couplings in the organ produced some truly otherworldly sounds. The opening Siciliana was a ripple of uncanny flutes over long pedal notes, while the Allemande offered a different flute mix dancing to a bagpipe-style drone.
The quiet Aria with its vibrating reed solo and overtone highlights sounded like a voice from outer space. The closing Gigue’s lively 6/8 dance grew more elaborate and thicker, but never lost its playful spirit.
The slashing opening mordent of the D minor Toccata and Fugue–the most famous note in the organ repertoire, a sound now heard from the Thomaskirche to Yankee Stadium–ripped across the nave of St. Mary’s Tuesday night like a challenge from the unseen organist in the choir loft. Jacobs made the Toccata’s fist-shaking rants and silences sound as radical as they must have to Mendelssohn’s Leipzig audience.
The fugue on yet another violinistic rocking theme, admired by Mendelssohn as “at the same time learned and something for the people,” has sparked debate among scholars over its authorship. One critic summed up their dilemma as finding the work ”too simplistic for it to have been written down by Bach, and too much a stroke of genius to have been composed by anyone but Bach.”
Leaving controversy behind, Jacobs barreled ahead with the fugue, piquantly registering its lighter moments and spouting flames in the toccata-coda, to the audience’s delight.
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