Luogo e data di registrazione		Saitama Arts Theater, Concert Hall (Japan) - February 2016
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer | Engineer		Marion Schwebel (Take5 Music Production) | Thore Brinkmann (Take5 Music Production) | Akimi Hayashi
	Edizione CD		BIS - BIS-2231 SACD - (1 CD) - durata 70' 23" - (p) & (c) 2017 - DDD
	Note		-

COMMENTARY

Schleicht, spielende Wellen [Glide, Playful Waves], BWV 206 The ‘dramma per musica’ Schleicht, spielende Wellen is dedicated to Augustus III (1696–1763), Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. The history of the work is linked in a special way to a surprise visit the royal family made to Leipzig in 1734. When the royal visit on 2nd Octo ber 1724 was an nounced, Bach was working on the cantata Schleicht, spielende Wellen, intended as a festive piece to mark the birthday of Augustus III on 7th October. But nobody had con sid ered the possibility that the sovereign might be present in person. On account of his visit, a celebratory event was arranged for the 5th October, focusing instead on the anni versary of his election as King of Poland. Bach had no option but to put the birthday cantata aside and devote himself to the new project, the cantata Preise dein Glücke, gesegnetes Sachsen, with all possible haste. Schleicht, spielende Wellen eventually saw the light of day two years later, on 7th October 1736, with a festive performance at the Café Zimmermann in Leipzig. Bach’s unknown librettist organized the text as a roleplay of four rivers: all of them have a claim on the ruler about which they must come to an agreement. The Vistula (bass) stands for Poland, the Elbe (tenor) for Saxony, the Danube (alto) for Austria and the Pleiße (soprano) for Leipzig. First of all the four rivers are called upon to demonstrate their festive joy by means of rushing waves and strong currents. After that, each river has a secco recitative followed by an aria. In these pairs of movements the Vistula, Elbe and Danube in turn have the opportunity to make their claims and express their admiration for the royal house. Only the Pleiße puts its claim forward silently. It acts as a mediator, and its words – ultimately taken up by all four rivers – explain that the Danube should honour the royal couple but also leave them to the other three rivers; meanwhile the Vistula and Elbe should accept that the King will share his time between Poland and Saxony. The results of the encounter are portrayed in a recitative from the four main characters, who reach a peaceful accord and, with collective greetings, commend the King to divine providence. With evident purpose and great skill the librettist has delighted in making abundant use of river metaphors, and Bach too avails himself extensively of these. No doubt to the surprise of all the listeners of the time, the splendidly orchestrated opening movement begins piano, then breaking out all the more effectively into forte with timpani and trumpets. The same procedure is then repeated when the choir enters: quietly, with a rocking motion, we hear the gliding waves, murmuring softly in the lower register, pianissimo, and then they rush swiftly and powerfully, supported by the entire orchestra with fast runs in the violins, flutes and oboes. The Vistula’s recitative (second movement) brings our attention back to the turmoil of war in Poland following the royal election of 1733, thereupon praising the King’s abilities as a peacemaker all the more emphatically. Like the recitative with its mythological allusions, the aria ‘Close the doors of Janus’s temple’ (third movement) is evidently intended for academically trained listeners. In ancient Rome the doors of the Temple of Janus remained open whenever the Empire was at war, and were closed only when the war had been won and peace reigned on all the borders. The message of the aria is thus: now peace reigns throughout the land. As the text suggests, musical images of billows and waves predominate in the lively solo violin part in the aria of the Elbe. In the middle section the voice joins in with demanding coloraturas; the mention of ‘hundredfold echoes’ of the ‘sweet sounds’ of the King’s name gives rise to a wide variety of echo effects between the voice and solo violin. The Danube declares a somewhat indirect claim on Augustus, as his wife was an Austrian princess from the Habsburg family (sixth movement). The aria, accompanied by two oboes in a sonorous and contrapuntally dense setting, is a song of praise to the King’s wife. The Pleiße now speaks up as an arbitrator (eight movement) – and, in her aria (ninth movement), demonstrates the harmony that unity produces: ‘Listen! The choir of gentle flutes cheers the heart, delights the ear.’ Following the text, Bach asks for a ‘choir’ of three flutes, which present the ‘agreeable harmony’ of the ‘unbroken union’ mentioned in the middle part of the aria. Such a musically delicate flute aria would never have been heard before in Leipzig. In the end unity and joy reign, and the choir and orchestra conclude the rivers’ confrontation in the dance-like metre of a gigue. Bach’s cantata must have been very well liked in Leipzig: in 1740 he performed it again, with small adjustments to the text, to mark the sovereign’s name day on 3rd August – this time in the open air, in the garden of the Café Zimmermann. Preise dein Glücke, gesegnetes Sachsen, BWV 215 [Praise your Fortune, Blessed Saxony] More than any other secular work by Bach, the cantata Preise dein Glücke, gesegnetes Sachsen reflects a piece of history. At the same time the circumstances of its composition provide insight into Bach’s sometimes turbulent everyday professional life as Thomaskantor and director of music in Leipzig. The work is a cantata that pays tribute to the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, Augustus III. It owes its existence to the surprise visit made by the royal family to Leipzig in 1734 in order to attend the annual fair held around Michaelmas. The King, Queen and Princes arrived on 2nd October and, as the visit had been announced just three days previously, organizing the essential congratulatory celebrations placed the city elders in a very difficult situation. The city’s students were inspired – or perhaps compelled – to commission a homage cantata with all possible haste: the text from the well-known man of letters Magister Johann Christoph Clauder (1701–79), and the music from Bach. And even if the librettist worked very quickly, Bach cannot have had more than three days to produce the music. The festive occasion took place three days after the King’s arrival, on 5th October. That day was also the anniversary of a significant political event: the previous year, in Warsaw, the Elector of Saxony had been elected King of Poland. The cantata’s text frequently refers to this event, and also – especially – to the political confusion that resulted from the monarch’s election. The text does not, however, mention that the election did not proceed in a totally orthodox manner: Augustus did not put his name forward until after the Poles had already decided in favour of Prince Stanisław Leszczyński, and then he was elected King by a minority, under pressure from the Habsburgs and with support from Russia. Leszczyński, however, insisted on his right to the throne; military complications ensued. Leszczyński and his troops entrenched themselves in Danzig (Gdańsk) and managed to resist a siege for some six months until, in the spring of 1734, he was forced to yield to superior forces and surrendered. Magister Clauder takes a somewhat different view of some of these happenings. In the fourth movement – the bass recitative – he claims that ‘Sarmatia’ (Poland) chose Augustus ‘above all others’, especially because of ‘the magnificence of his virtue’, which enraptured all his subjects. Anything else stems from envy and jealousy! In the sixth movement, the soprano recitative, allusion is made to an unnamed ‘city that opposed him for so long’ and yet which, as the text goes on to boast, ‘feel[s] his mercy more than his anger’. The city in question is Danzig. In the last recitative, the eighth movement, the text takes a swipe at France: ‘At a time’, sings the bass, ‘when we are surrounded on all sides by lightning and noise, yea, when the might of the French (which has so often been quashed)… even threatens our fatherland with sword and fire’ – and so on. France was on the opposing side: Leszczyński was the father-in-law of Louis XV. Later on, in fact, Poland was very satisfied with its King Augustus – and, overall, historians have by no means reached a negative verdict on ‘the Saxon Piast’ – as he is called in the fourth movement. Bach’s music hardly requires any explanation. The splendid double chorus with full orchestra at the beginning; the rich use of wind instruments, also in recitatives; the virtuoso solo writing; the martial trumpet signal when the bass sings about warlike lightning and noise: Bach knew what worked! And no doubt the Leipzig audience hummed the beautiful, hymn-like, rather effusive ending of the cantata long after the event. Our admiration is aroused not only by the beauty of the music itself but also by Bach’s rate of work. In the shortest imaginable time he produced more than forty pages of score; with great alacrity the parts had to be written out and the work had to be rehearsed. Admittedly Bach had made the process of composition easier in his time-honoured fashion: for the opening double chorus he reused the beginning of a cantata from 1732, written for the name day of Augustus the Strong (Es lebe der König, der Vater im Lande, BWV Anh. 11 – of which only the text has survived). A decade and a half later, Bach revised this movement again; in that form, as the Osanna in excelsis of the Mass in B minor, it acquired a longevity and relevance that went far beyond its own time. In the arias for tenor (third movement) and bass (fifth movement), too, Bach evidently drew on existing works – although these cannot be identified with certainty. The only parts to have been composed completely from scratch were the recitatives, the soprano aria (seventh movement) and the final chorus. The soprano aria is a display piece with subtle, chamber-music-like sonority. Two transverse flutes in unison interact with the soprano (supported by oboe d’amore) above a bass line that is an octave higher than usual, played by violins and violas without any continuo accompaniment. Such a sound image, so to speak stripped of all earthly burden, is used by Bach primarily for depicting purity and innocence. Here it characterizes the King’s nobility: ‘But to repay evil with charity is the pre rogative… of Augustus’. Bach enthusiasts will recognize the music: it appears in modified form in Part 5 of the Christmas Oratorio as a bass aria with the text ‘Erleucht auch meine finstre Sinnen’ (BWV248/47). Bach’s ‘dramma per Musica’ was presented as an evening entertainment in the open air, in front of the King’s lodgings in the Apelsches Haus (nowadays Königshaus) on the south side of the market square in Leipzig. The Leipzig municipal chronicles tell of a festive procession of musicians, accompanied by 600 students, each bearing a wax torch. The music was a total success; the chronicle reports that ‘His Royal Majesty, alongside his Royal Spouse and Royal Princes… did not leave the window before the music was ended, but listened to it graciously, and His Majesty liked it extremely much’. © Klaus Hofmann 2016