Canada Various – Salish Sea Early Music Festival: Jeffrey Cohan (baroque flute), Susie Napper (viola da gamba), Stephen Stubbs (baroque guitar). St Mary’s Kerrisdale, Vancouver, 19.2.2024. (GN)
Couperin – Second concert from Concerts royaux
Morel – Chaconne en trio from Premier livre de pièces de violle
Corbetta – Sinfonia; Chaconne for solo guitar
de Visée – excerpts from Livre de pièces pour la guitare
Sainte-Colombe – ‘Les pleurs’
Marais – ‘Muzette’
de la Barre – Chaconne from Suite IX, Sonata L’inconnue
J. S. Bach – Flute Sonata in E minor
We often must travel considerable distances to go to concerts, so it is nice when one alights on your doorstep, so to speak, in a church in your neighbourhood. This concert was part of the Salish Sea Early Music Festival, a project that finds its roots in Seattle and Chicago as far back as the 1980s and has been championed in recent years by American flutist Jeffrey Cohan. It now plays a series of concerts in several Pacific Northwest cities, and Cohan invites different early music specialists each time. It gave its first concert in Vancouver in 2015.
The programme on this occasion was adventurous, showcasing some inspired but lesser-known music from the court of Louis XIV. The invited participants were of the highest order: lutenist/conductor Stephen Stubbs, the long-time director of the Boston Early Music Festival and founder of Seattle’s Pacific Music Works; and Susie Napper, viola da gamba, founder and director emeritus of the Montreal Baroque Festival, and currently a member of Ensemble Caprice. The three musicians now combine under the name Simphonie Nouvelle.
This was a lovely performance in an almost perfect sonic acoustic. Cohan’s pure and cleanly-etched baroque-flute line meshed with the multi-shaded virtuosity of Napper’s viola da gamba, with Stubbs’s subtle and knowing continuo in the middle. The results were exceptional. A notable feature of the instrumentation was Stubbs’ use of a baroque guitar for the continuo, which was in fact introduced and made popular by one of the composers featured, Francisco Corbetta (1615-1681).
François Couperin’s more familiar and extended Second concert from Concerts royaux started things off. At what might be termed comfortable tempos, the playing had remarkable ease and flow, with a sense of natural inevitability. Cohan’s flute was both tender and searching, Napper brought the sinew and angularity, while Stubbs added an absolute rhythmic certainty. The overall result was charming. There was not only continuity and balance, but also a nice feeling of space. Less well known is the Chaconne en trio by Jacques Morel (c.1680-c.1740) that followed, also a piece of considerable charm. It displayed Cohan’s agility and Napper’s virtuosity and gave plenty of room for the guitar’s contribution.
Two of Corbetta’s pieces were featured. His rhythmically beguiling Sinfonia brought Stubbs and Napper fruitfully together, while his Chaconne for solo guitar was a showcase for Stubbs’ precise and considered playing. Robert de Visée (c.1655–1732) was also enamoured of the guitar, and his Allemande and Courante from Livre de pièces pour la guitare were performed with a fetching liquidity of line.
Possibly the deepest feelings came in ‘Les pleurs’ for solo viola da gamba by Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe (c.1640-c.1700), where Napper found the most subtle legato shadings and a remarkable expressive power. Marin Marais’s (1656-1728) lovely ‘Muzette’ with offstage flute also amplified dirge-like feelings.
Slightly later composers closed the concert: Michel de la Barre (c.1675-1745) and, yes, ‘the elephant in the room’, as Susie Napper described him – Johann Sebastian Bach. The former’s Chaconne was a delectable virtuoso piece, rhythmically decisive and featuring a variety of different instrumental techniques, including double/flutter tonguing on the flute. It was beautifully executed. The Bach Flute Sonata in E minor was just as fine. It found playing of real character in the opening Adagio, strong rapport and rhythmic bite from Cohan and Napper in the following Allegro, tangible feeling from Cohan’s flute over pizzicato in the Andante and energy and joy in the canonic and strongly rhythmic finale. The encore was a compelling little piece by Élisabeth de La Guerre (1665-1729).
All of this was delightful. It was not just an inspiring local concert – it would have been an inspiring concert anywhere.
Geoffrey Newman