Visiting American conductor Joshua Rifkin, in Israel to lead the Camerata orchestra, is known for having caused a stir in the musical world.
No one disputes that the cantatas, passions and masses of Bach are the ultimate in vocal music from the Baroque period. The three elements involved in performing them - the orchestra, soloists who sing arias or recitatives, and the choir - have traditionally been viewed as distinct from each other. Until at least 30 years ago, the choir was the Achilles' heel of many recordings since not all of its members were virtuoso singers.
American conductor Joshua Rifkin, who will this week conduct the Israel Camerata orchestra and soloists performing two Stabat Maters, by Boccherini and D'Astorga, proposed a new idea 20 years ago that indirectly resolved the problem.
He contended that one could take four singers, one for each voice, and let them sing the parts meant for the choir. Rifkin's main rationale for this: Bach himself did not have at his disposal the kind of choir that is the standard today and the soloists he used (a soprano, alto, tenor and bass) did everything.
Rifkin, who grew up in New York in the 1950s (his parents, of Russian-Jewish descent, were also born in New York), is a conductor, pianist, harpsichordist, composer and musicologist. His path to baroque music was unusual: As a young man, he was inclined mostly to 20th century music, was close to the avant-garde and even studied with Stockhausen in Darmstadt.
As a hobby, he played jazz in his youth and later a lot of ragtime music (eventually even releasing a recording of works by Scott Joplin). "It was a wonderful world to grow up in," he says.
But he says he has now completely left the avant-garde world. He said he became disillusioned by serialist music and reached a sort of cul de sac. "I couldn't go back to writing in a tonal style and minimalism didn't suit me." So he stopped composing music and switched to conducting, which became his primary occupation.
In the introduction to a 1997 interview with Rifkin that appeared in his book, "Inside Early Music," Bernard Sherman wrote that Rifkin's suggestion to drop the choir in contemporary performances of Bach initially turned him into a pariah in the world of baroque music. But today it seems that Rifkin has managed to gain a following for his approach.
With the help of theoretical evidence and some wonderful recordings applying that approach, he has won over some respected conductors to his idea, which is backed up by musicological-historical research. This week Rifkin will use his approach to perform "Stabat Mater" by D'Astorga, a Spanish composer from the early 18th century, with soloists and the Camerata orchestra.
Joshua Rifkin recalls a conversation he had last summer in Leipzig with Sigiwald Kuijken - one of the first baroque musicians in continental Europe to make the shift, after others in England, particularly Andrew Parrott had tried Rifkin's concept.
"Sigiwald said to me: `you know, at first, I opposed you, but I looked into it again and was convinced,'" Rifkin recalls. Kuijken told Rifkin that he was won over mostly because the works sounded more beautiful without a large choir.
Does "beautiful" in this context mean more polyphonic transparency?
Not only, explains Rifkin. The music gains in every sense: "Bach was not stupid and knew what he was doing." If Bach believed that four singers would perform the choir parts, he composed those parts accordingly and that's the best way to perform them, Rifkin insists.
So, your main argument was faithfulness to the historical truth?
"I would say this: I'm the one who's the hard core of authenticity and I take very seriously historical evidence that can provide hints about how they played and sang during the Baroque period," he says. In terms of practical applications today, Rifkin says he implements lessons from historical research only when they speak to him personally.
He believes the correct definition of historical approach is constant dialogue between the personality of the performer and the evidence that faces him.
Asked which stars of the authentic school have influenced him, Rifkin answers: "Truthfully, no one."
Asked about the impact on him of two leading figures of the authentic school, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt, Rifkin says: "I never admired them." He says he came to the historical approach on his own and the first time he heard Bach's cantatas performed by Harnoncourt, it sounded horrible to him. He still doesn't like the sound.
As for Leonhardt, "I respect him, but I never saw him as a model," Rifkin says.
And what about other prominent conductors in the contemporary baroque scene such as John Eliot Gardiner?
"Gardiner? Let's just say we have different ideas," says Rifkin. He considers Gardiner a capable musician, but one with whom he has exchanged barbs. He met Gardiner for the first time fairly recently . "We had a chat and at a certain point, I said to him, `You know, John Eliot, we don't have to listen to each other.'"
Did the pre-baroque performances of Karl Richter, for example, seem acceptable to you?
"Richter always sounded horrible to me, even when everyone said he was magnificent. I respected August Wenzinger, a cellist and conductor from Switzerland, but for the most part, I learned on my own. There were also other figures not connected to baroque at all: Stravinsky - I had the privilege of watching him conduct in my youth, Toscanini and Furtwangler - I grew up on their art, they taught me how to shape music. When I heard baroque music played on authentic instruments for the first time, I immediately liked the sound, but it was many years before I was able to work on my own in the discipline. In the U.S., there weren't any musicians of that kind yet."
Asked which contemporary performers most influenced him, Rifkin says that the musicians from his own Bach Ensemble, founded in 1978, have had the most impact on him. He admits that initially he was arrogant, but later found there was something to be learned from the instrumentalists, as well as the singers who appeared with the group. Summarizing his approach to baroque performances, Rifkin says that initially the big mistake of the historical school was that its starting point was the harpsichord.
The starting point should have been singing. Except that when this school started out 40 years ago, there weren't any singers who could follow through with the required production and interpretation methods. Rifkin believes musicians have to strive to use their instruments, when playing baroque music, the same way a good singer uses his voice. Musical performance is like talking; a good musical delivery is like speaking your own language, he contends.
Native speakers use effective rhetorical tools when they talk. It has to be the same way in music, before anything else. Only after this is there any point in talking about a higher level, which is interpretation.
Let's go back for a moment to your view of the choir. Should the four singers who are meant to replace it use a different style than the one they use in solo roles?
"It's not as different as night and day," explains Rifkin. For the "choir" parts, a singer should imagine himself or herself playing in a string quartet, which sometimes blends in and sometimes stands out. Even the Bach choir parts have virtuosi segments requiring solo skills. Once it was hard to find singers who could work that way, today there are many who can slip into it almost immediately. "That's how it will be, I hope, in the performance of D'Astorga's `Stabat Mater' here," says Rifkin.
Asked why he hasn't recorded more cantatas given the fact that the dozen-odd Bach cantatas he has recorded received rave reviews, Rifkin answers: "That question should be directed at recording companies." He notes that L'Oiseau-Lyre, for whom he recorded the cantatas in the past, no longer exists.
He has recently released a new Bach disk with the American company, Dorian Records, featuring cantatas no. 12, 172 and 182. "The bass is performed by Michael Schopper, a name that should be familiar to veteran Israeli Bach fans," he says
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