flute soloist in the season-opener concert on
September 15 at Daylesford Abbey
...in conversation with Richard Shapp
Valentin Radu has programmed an exciting all-Bach concert to open the 2013-14 VoxAmaDeus concert season. Johann Sebastian Bach’s six Brandenburg Concertos are among the most popular musical creations of all times. On Sunday, September 15, in the acoustically glorious and architecturally beautiful Daylesford Abbey in Paoli, Maestro Radu will lead exciting performances of Concertos Nos. 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Each concerto features solo instruments in performances that contrast with the rest of the ensemble—thus the word concerto, which is a musical composition featuring a solo instrument (or sometimes two or more) in musical dialogue with a chamber orchestra ensemble. The word probably was derived from the Latin concertare (“to fight” or “to contend”), although another Latin source may have been conserere (“to join together” or “to unite”). Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) is generally credited with bringing the “solo” instrument vs. ensemble to its compositional zenith, and Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713) is credited as the creator of the concerto grosso form, in which larger units of solo instruments were employed in contrast to the main ensemble. The Bach Brandenburgs fall into this structural category, but their compositional style is closer to that of Vivaldi. Typically, a concerto of the later Baroque era (ca. 1700-1750) is in three movements, often with a fast-slow-fast pacing; lasts about 10 to 15 minutes; and demonstrates the technical virtuosic capabilities of both the featured solo instrument(s) and the solo performer(s).
RAS: Steven, welcome to the VoxAmaDeus E-Newsletter. But you are no stranger to performing with Valentin Radu and his instrumental ensembles. What are your earliest memories of your association with Maestro Radu?
SZ: I first met Valentin and VoxAmaDeus in 1997, the year I moved to Philadelphia to teach music history at Temple University's Boyer College of Music and Dance. If memory serves, it was a Classical-period program that included a Mozart piano concerto with a guest soloist from Romania.
RAS: That would have been Valentin’s mentor, the titan of the piano, Dan Grigore.
SZ: One thing that has always struck me about VoxAmaDeus is its unusually wide range of repertoire, spanning the centuries from the Renaissance straight through to the twentieth century. The programming is always ambitious, and there is a palpable sense of adventure coming from both conductor and musicians. From my perspective as a player of historical flutes, I have especially admired the organization's long-standing commitment to using period instruments.
RAS: We’ll return to the topic of “historical flutes” in a bit. But please inform our readers about your highly impressive c.v.
SZ: I'm a native of the Boston area, and have played the flute since age ten. As an undergraduate at Vassar College, I was fortunate to study flute with John Solum, who among other things is one of this country's pioneers of the traverso, which is more commonly known as the Baroque flute. Over my last two years in college, I studied traverso alongside the modern flute.
One summer I attended Oberlin Conservatory's Baroque Performance Institute, where I took lessons from flutist Christopher Kruegar and coached with artists like violinist Marilyn McDonald and baritone Max van Egmond. From that point on, I was hooked not only on the traverso, but also on an approach to performance that stressed the close connections between music and speech.
I attended Cornell University for graduate study in musicology, kept up the traverso, and studied historical performance practice with two renowned figures in the field: fortepianist Malcolm Bilson and musicologist Neal Zaslaw. In the twenty-odd years since, I've specialized as a performer on flutes of the Baroque and Classical eras, playing less and less modern flute.
RAS: If I may interject an historical note. The word traversa or traverso translates as “transverse” which means that the Baroque flute is held to the lips at a “right angle” to the mouth. Tell us about the Baroque flute and about the controversy that surrounds this instrument and the Bach Fifth Brandenburg.
SZ: Unlike the Renaissance flute, the Baroque flute has one key that allows the instrument to play D-sharp/E-flat, a pitch not available on the earlier instruments. The recorder, the other kind of flute used in Bach’s day, is the traverso’s cousin and predecessor. As VoxAmaDeus audiences know from the many stunning performances by Rainer Beckmann, the recorder is held vertically like the clarinet or the oboe, and does not have any keys. As the Baroque era ceded to the Rococo and then to the Classical period, it was the traverso that “won out” over the recorder. It may be considered the immediate ancestor of the modern flute with which we are all familiar, though it is important to realize that modified “Baroque” designs coexisted with the modern design throughout the second half of the nineteenth century (about which, more below). The Brandenburg Concertos, which are thought to have been composed between 1713 and 1721 (when Bach prepared his presentation score for the Margrave of Brandenburg), include parts for both recorder and traverso. A recorder is called for in Concerto No. 2, a traverso is included among the soloists in Concerto No. 5, and two recorders are paired with a solo violin in Concerto No. 4. However, the recorder parts in this last concerto will be played on traverse flutes in our upcoming program, and indeed there is reason to believe that Bach may have had the traverso in mind when composing the piece.
RAS: Explain, please.
SZ: In Bach’s score of Concerto No. 4 he specifies two “Flauti d’Echo” (“echo flutes”). The Italian word flauto was generally used to mean “recorder” during the eighteenth century, so it is usually assumed, with good reason, that Bach wanted recorders and not traversos. However, what he meant by “echo” is a matter of debate in the musicological community, though this modifier likely refers to how the instruments are used rather than an exotic type of instrument. But there are other factors at play that lead me to believe that Bach—always the practical man and musician—designed the wind parts to be playable on either type of flute.
One of these factors is the key: the concerto is in G major, a tonality better suited to the traverso than the recorder, which is more at home in “flat” keys such as F major or G minor. The nature of the writing also points to the traverso, or at least to Bach’s desire to create a generic “flute” part. Be that as it may, I can’t imagine that a practical musician like Bach would have objected to replacing recorders with traversos. At least this is my hunch based on many years of studying and performing his music and that of his contemporaries.
RAS: What are some of the differences between the traverso or Baroque flute and today’s flute?
SZ: The traverso is typically made of wood or ivory, has a conical bore (tapering from the head joint down to the foot joint), and one or just a handful of keys. The modern flute, first developed by Theobald Boehm in the middle of the nineteenth century, is most often made out of metal (especially silver), has a cylindrical bore, and a marvelously elaborate key system that opens up all sorts of technical possibilities for the player. The traverso lasted a long time mainly because it produced an expressive, beautiful tone. But as orchestras and concert halls grew bigger during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, adjustments were made to its design. To make its tone louder and more even, additional keys were added and the headjoint was lined with metal. Even after the modern flute was developed, many flutists kept playing what became known as the “simple system” flute, even into the twentieth century. And some musicians continued to prefer the sound produced by the older-style instruments. For example, Johannes Brahms hated the sound produced by the modern flute, likening it to a canon!
RAS: Which of the Brandenburg Concertos will you perform?
SZ: In this upcoming program, I'll be performing the Fourth and Fifth Concertos. The latter is one of the earliest concertos with a solo part for flute, and each time I return to it, I marvel at how flattering Bach's writing is for each of the three solo instruments (violin and harpsichord in addition to flute). This will be the second time I’ve performed the Fourth Concerto on traverso with VoxAmaDeus, and I recall that when playing it several seasons ago, it first occurred to me that Bach might actually have had this instrument in mind when composing the work.
RAS: Thank you Steven.