Concert Spirituel: A mezzo to remember

Bach’s birthday, this year his 324th, is always a fine excuse for multiple performances of his works. This year, Bach’s faith, joy and optimism are particularly welcome, uplifting the spirits in big concerts as the six Brandenburgs at Benaroya last week, and little ones such as the Concert Spirituel performance at Christ Episcopal Church in the University district on Bach’s actual birthday, Saturday March 21.

Flutist Jeffrey Cohan is the moving spirit behind Concert Spirituel, and he has presented and performed in “J.S. Bach! A Birthday Bash,” around the Sound and over the mountains in eight concerts over the past ten days.

Christ Episcopal’s was the only Seattle performance. This was an excellent program, well-designed, beginning with Telemann’s Cantata, “Ihr Voelker, hoert,” ending with Bach’s Cantata No. 82, “Ich habe, genug,” and in between, two sonatas and the Italian Concerto, all by Bach.

watching tangled online

Cohan, playing Baroque flute, was joined by a friend and co-performer for the past quarter-century, harpsichordist Hans-Juergen Schnoor of Luebeck, Germany, and mezzo-soprano Maike Albrecht, also from Luebeck.

Albrecht’s lovely voice is one you would never get bored listening to. It’s warm, easy and generous with depth and character, and above all expressive, so that hearing the recitatives you are hearing a story as she sings it, while the arias are heartfelt commentary. She uses only an occasional, light vibrato, perfect for Baroque music.

Both cantatas are happy ones, Telemann’s rejoicing in the light God brings to the world, and the Bach an embracing of death as a portal to God.

The balance of instruments wasn’t as good as it might have been. Cohan is an experienced performer on flutes from the Renaissance on, and the Baroque flute he chose to play at this concert was an extremely soft-toned one. Except in the higher registers couldn’t always be heard above the harpsichord.

Schnoor was playing a small, two-manual Flemish-type instrument, but played with a rhythmic freedom in his right hand which didn’t seem completely suited to either Telemann or Bach, though it was more noticeable in the Telemann. Nor did it mesh with Cohan, so that the two were often not playing exactly together. It was distracting and disconcerting.

Cohan spoke briefly and informatively before the two sonatas he played with Schnoor. Neither was originally composed for solo flute and harpsichord. In the first, BWV 1027 in G major originally for viola da gamba and later arranged by Bach for two flutes, Cohan played the gamba part. BWV 1021 was originally written for violin. The latter was the more successful of the two performances by Cohan and Schnoor, probably because the violin part was higher than the gamba one, so that Cohan’s flute was more audible against the other instrument. I would have like to hear more of Cohan, both for the music but also for his fine, expressive playing.

In the Italian Concerto, Schnoor’s habit of playing the right hand slightly before the left resulted in a less than satisfactory performance, to our ears here anyway. The performance didn’t sound decisively clean, while the lower register on the harpsichord sounded a little heavy.