Recital: A Baroque Evening with Nicholas
The Love Letter, 1750 (oil on canvas) by François Boucher. National Gallery of Art.
A Baroque Evening with Nicholas McGegan
By Nicholas McGegan
An attentive connoisseur of music in the first part of the eighteenth century could easily tell if what was being performed was in the Italian style, the French, or north German. In the same way, today we can recognise dances by Rameau, a Vivaldi concerto, or organ fugues as belonging to distinct national styles. Though it was fairly easy to identify the style, this did not mean that the composers were necessarily natives of France, Italy, or Germany. Indeed, the last two were not sovereign nations until over a century later. A composer, wherever he lived, could adopt a national style for a particular work or even mix them. Vivaldi, the quintessential Venetian composer, would occasionally entitle a movement “alla Francese”; Bach composed both the Italian Concerto and the French Suites.
The program that you will hear this evening presents a Frenchman being himself, a north German composing an Italianate concerto, and another German mixing the French style with a little bit of something English.
Jean-Philippe Rameau/Graham Sadler
Suite from Castor et Pollux
operas to be performed. He was already fifty-four, a good age at the time, and until he was fifty, his career had been as an organist and music theorist. He was a brilliant harpsichordist and published a fine corpus of exceptionally virtuosic and imaginative works for the instrument. A friend commented that “his heart and soul were in the harpsichord; once he had shut its lid, there was no one home.”
By all accounts he was a complicated character about whom his rivals, enemies, and even friends found plenty to mock. His very appearance was rather strange. He was tall and gaunt—“more like a ghost than a man,” wrote one contemporary—while another said that “he had a sharp chin, no stomach, and flutes for legs” and that he “resembled a long organ pipe with the blower away.” In Diderot’s Le Neveu de Rameau, the composer is described as only being kind to anyone by mistake. He certainly had a reputation for being very stingy with money.
However, none of his supposed character flaws can be heard in his music, which he himself called “the language of the heart.” D’Aguin described him as the “most sublime painter of our age,” and to carry that analogy further, I think that one could easily compare Rameau to his contemporaries Watteau and Boucher. Like Rameau’s music, their paintings are often delicate and ornate, sensual and without brash colors. Shepherds and shepherdess engage in amorous dalliance in a landscape bathed in soft sunshine. This is a world away from the music and painting of the second half of the eighteenth century, where Gluck and David reigned supreme. Theirs is an art where frivolous ornament is banished, sensuality is nowhere to be found; all is noble and heroic. Compared to Rameau’s voluptuous music, I find it all a little cold.
Rameau’s operas, whatever the plot, are always filled with ballet. It is in his music for dance where the composer gives his imagination free rein. When listening one can see the gestures and graceful steps of the dancers in the mind’s eye.
Castor et Pollux was premiered in 1737 but its success came only after extensive revision for a revival in 1754. Until the Revolution and even afterwards, the opera was performed more often than any other of Rameau’s works. The Suite that we shall hear tonight is drawn from this later version. Even after several hundred years, Rameau remains a supreme master of orchestral color. In this regard, he is truly the ancestor of Debussy and Ravel. The pieces may bear the titles of the formal French court dances, but in reality they come from another world and transport the listener back to a lost Arcadian age.
— © Nicholas McGegan
Johann Sebastian Bach
Violin Concerto in E major, BWV 1042
The solo concerto is very much a creation of the early eighteenth century, and it is found first in northern Italy. Vivaldi, Marcello, and their contemporaries published the first ones sometime after 1710 and, because their works were printed, it was not long before they became very popular all over Europe. Exactly when Bach composed this concerto is something of a mystery. It must have been before the late 1730s, because at that time he wrote an arrangement of it substituting a harpsichord solo for the violin. Most of his instrumental music dates from the period when he worked at the Court of the Prince of Anhalt-Köthen. Since the prince was a Calvinist, sacred music in the court chapel had to be of the simplest kind. But instead the prince, who was himself a string player, encouraged his court composer to produce as much instrumental music as he could. In his youth, the Prince had traveled widely, including to Rome and Venice. His travel diary still survives and from it one can discover that he was a real opera fanatic. He would certainly have heard the music of Vivaldi in Venice. Though he never ventured far from home, Bach too was an admirer of Italian music. While at the court in Weimar—his post before going to Köthen—he saw and probably performed the Italian music from the editions that the Duke had collected in Amsterdam, where much of it was published. Bach transcribed a number of string concertos by Vivaldi and his contemporaries for solo keyboard. This gave him a fine background for producing Italianate compositions of his own. Although his own concertos are in the form of Vivaldi’s, Bach’s own inimitable style always shines through. It is as though Bach dressed himself up in a suit of flashy Italian clothes, but underneath his personality remained unchanged.
Bach left the little court in Köthen in 1723 to take up the prestigious post as cantor of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. For the first five or more years, his time was totally occupied with providing an astonishing amount of music for the city’s churches. However, in 1729 he also became director of the Collegium Musicum, where instrumental music was performed often by the students at the university (and of course by his own sons). This was the perfect opportunity for him to revive the concertos that he had previously composed in Weimar and Köthen and to produce some new works.
Whereas Vivaldi’s violin concertos are full of panache and extravagant brilliance, Bach’s are much more carefully composed while retaining the form of his models. He uses the ritornello form, where the main tutti sections are interspersed with solos, but he integrates everything to a greater extent than his models. In the slow movement he adopts the Italian convention of using a ground bass that the soloist wreathes arabesques around. He leaves no room for the soloist to improvise on their own, as Vivaldi might have done. The finale is one of pure joy. In keeping with his Italian model, Bach shuns the contrapuntal complexity that he would use in his more Germanic style. — © Nicholas McGegan
George Frideric Handel
Water Music Suite in F Major, HWV 348
ravel in the eighteenth century was usually unpleasant, even dangerous. Even if you were wealthy, roads were often seas of mud and full of potholes to jolt your coach. You could also be waylaid by highwaymen who were a lot less genteel than Robin Hood when relieving you of your valuables. If you were the king and his court, it was much safer and more comfortable to go by water. You could wave to your subjects standing on the riverbank while still keeping a safe distance from them. The river Thames provided the perfect waterway for an excursion; the royal barge could be accompanied by another boat filled with musicians to entertain you during the trip. The Stuart and Hanoverian monarchs amassed a fine collection of royal barges, some of which still survive in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich.
At the time, the Daily Courant gave a vivid description of the royal journey during which Handel’s Water Music was first performed:
On Wednesday Evening [17 July, 1717], at about 8, the King took Water at Whitehall in an open Barge, wherein were also the Dutchess of Bolton, the Dutchess of Newcastle, the Countess of Godolphin, Madam Kilmanseck, and the Earl of Orkney. And went up the River towards Chelsea. Many other Barges with Persons of Quality attended, and so great a Number of Boats, that the whole River in a manner was cover’d; a City Company’s Barge was employ’d for the Musick, wherein were 50 Instruments of all sorts, who play’d all the Way from Lambeth (while the Barges drove with the Tide without Rowing, as far as Chelsea) the finest Symphonies, compos’d express for this Occasion, by Mr. Hendel; which his Majesty liked so well, that he caus’d it to be plaid over three times in going and returning. At Eleven his Majesty went a-shore at Chelsea, where a Supper was prepar’d, and then there was another very fine Consort of Music, which lasted till 2; after which, his Majesty came again into his Barge, and return’d the same Way, the Musick continuing to play till he landed.
In the King’s barge were his favorites at court—a number that did not include his Queen, whom he had imprisoned in Celle not far from Hanover, or his children, whom he detested. The Prussian Ambassador to Great Britain noted that the music alone cost £150.
What we know today as Handel’s Water Music is actually made up of several suites that were composed for similar occasions. The first suite in F major is most probably the one that was played in July 1717. The most notable feature is its use of the French horn, an instrument not widely known in Georgian London. It is possible that the players themselves were brought over from Bohemia, since there were seemingly none in Britain at the time. The horns’ festive music must have made a spectacular and novel effect as their sound rang out across the river. As for the music itself, there is an overture in the style that Handel used in his London operas, which is loosely based on French models. After this comes a suite of dances also in the French style, but with a couple of British hornpipes thrown in. The last two movements of the suite that you will hear tonight are rarely played. They likely formed part of the original 1717 suite, but at a later date they were recomposed and transposed. The new versions, which include trumpets as well as horns, form part of the second Water Music suite.
The King, who was a great music lover, clearly enjoyed Handel’s glorious music, which has retained its popularity to the present day. — © Nicholas McGegan
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Violinist Yvette Kraft is the winner of both the 2024 Aspen Music Festival Violin Concerto Competition and the 2024 DeLay Fellowship Award. Yvette took second place at the 2020 Grumiaux International Violin Competition in Brussels, was a semi-finalist in the 2019 Louis Spohr International Violin Competition in Weimar, and was a 2023 Frances Walton Competition solo winner. She is an NPR From the Top Fellow and performed in New York City at Charlotte White’s Salon de Virtuosi Holiday Concert in 2022. She has collaborated with distinguished artists such as Arnaud Sussman, Jon Kimura Parker, Jeremy Denk, Augustin Hadelich, and Gil Shaham. Yvette was the concertmaster of the 2024 New York String Orchestra Seminar at Carnegie Hall. She has soloed with numerous orchestras including the Seattle Symphony, the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, and the Spokane Symphony. Dedicated to outreach, Yvette is a member of Music to Save Humanity and gives varied performances such as retirement home recitals and children’s hospital livestreams. She loves to contribute to the liturgical music at her local parishes. After studying with Simon James, she completed her studies as a student of Robert Lipsett at the Colburn Conservatory of Music, winning the prestigious 2025 Frances Rosen Prize upon graduation.
