古典自由说 | Review of Juilliard415——评苏交特别策划 巴洛克盛宴——茱莉亚415古乐团

The Juilliard415 ensemble, directed by the violinist and professor Robert Mealy, is comprised of students in the graduate program in Historical Performance at The Juilliard School. In their lively concert in Suzhou on Saturday, October 19, 2024, they offered a tour of the international reach of two musical languages (the Italian and French styles) across Europe in the Baroque period. The musicians matched youthful enthusiasm with outstanding technical skill, making them effective advocates—even ambassadors—for early music.

Audience members unfamiliar with the culture of early music performance may have been surprised by some aspects of the concert, from the small size of the ensemble and the instruments (copies of period instruments, including the harpsichord and the theorbo, a long-necked plucked instrument in the lute family) to the sonority itself, at times more astringent than modern instruments, and at other times more resonant and warm. Perhaps most striking was the absence of a conductor, as this repertoire does not require one. Instead, rhythmic and expressive cues often came from the first violinist (for most of the program, the group’s director, Robert Mealy), whose role is to signal important downbeats and cadences as well as dramatic changes of tempo. Mealy’s animated movements seemed to embody the character of the French dance forms interspersed throughout the program. This repertoire may in fact benefit from the absence of a conductor, as lines of sight and coordination are redistributed among the musicians, who are guided—but not controlled—by the first violinist. Watching this ensemble, there was a sense that the musicians were producing the music themselves, as if improvising, rather than the music being coaxed or compelled out of them by a single center of authority.

This sense of ‘improvisation’ is not simply imaginary or metaphorical. Some of the most interesting things that happen in Baroque music are entirely dependent on the performers, who are free to embellish, decorate, and improvise in specific passages or types of movements. Baroque scores often leave may aspects of performance undetermined, from tempo and dynamics to instrumentation and the “notes” themselves. In other words, a “literal” interpretation of a Baroque score is often a contradiction in terms, because the score was never meant to be taken “literally.”

Two customary sites for improvisation and embellishment were featured on this program: the Italianate slow movement (typically marked Adagio or Largo) and the da capo aria. For instance, on the page, the opening Adagio of Arcangelo Corelli’s Concerto Grosso Op. 6, No. 4 is simply a series of homophonic chords played by the full ensemble, with only the outline of a melodic contour in the first violin. Yet Mealy elaborated on this violin line with rapid figures, as if threading loops with a delicate, silver thread. The first violinist (a student performer) in the slow movement of the Concerto Op. 3, No. 11 by Antonio Vivaldi,similarly improvised around her melodic line, turning it into a kind of mournful aria over the Siciliano rhythm of the orchestra.

The program mixed and matched various works, at times presenting excerpts from larger works rather than ‘complete works.’ As I’ve suggested, this more flexible approach to the concept of a ‘work’ is in keeping with the spirit of performance in the eighteenth century as well as the early nineteenth century. The presentation of two contrasting stages in the development of the instrumental concerto was particularly effective, with the earlier and later stages represented by the concertos by Corelli and Vivaldi, each scored for two violins, cello, and orchestra.

Another effective ‘pairing’ was the programming of two works associated with the famous French dancer and choreographer, Marie Sallé (1707–1756): George Frideric Handel’s Terpsicore, composed specifically for Sallé in London in 1734, and Jean-Féry Rebel’s Les Caractères de la danse, which she danced in in Paris in the late 1720s. The ensemble’s performance of the Caractères de la danse was especially fine: this suite, subtitled “fantasy” (fantasie), rapidly cycles through many of the common dance forms of the Baroque period. The sudden changes of character and tempo require a cohesive ensemble, one that is agile and precise enough to launch into a new gestural idiom with each change of dance form. In this performance, the concluding sections were compressed, cutting the Loure and Musette, perhaps to reach the virtuosic final section (an Italianate “sonata”) more quickly. Rebel’s Caractères illustrates the polyglot nature of the late Baroque style, mixing and transforming French and Italian idioms.

So too does Handel’s Terpsicore, which he composed as the prologue for the revised version of Il pastor fido in 1734. Terpsichore includes arias as well as dances, but Juilliard415 chose to draw only instrumental dances from it and to invent a new ‘suite’ by combining them with three arias from an early work of Handel’s, the secular cantata Aminta e Fillide (1708), “Fiamma bella ch’al ciel s’invia,” “È un foco quel d’amore,” and “Non si può dar un cor.”

In these and other arias on the program (from Handel’s operas Giulio Cesare, Ariodante, and Serse, and his oratorio Theodora), Xenia Puskarz Thomas demonstrated a powerful stage presence and a vibrant voice. She consistently embellished the repetition of the opening section of each da capo aria in stimulating ways. Her performance was most effective, I think, in the two slower arias: “As with rosy steps the morn,” from Theodora, and the encore, “Ombra mai fu,” from Serse. This encore offered a final showcase of the lyrical expressiveness of Thomas’s voice and the ensemble’s rich sonority, as well as their cohesive coordination and their control over time, even more impressive in extended lyrical expression than in rapid and virtuosic works.

What this ensemble does best, I think, can be summarized in two ways. First, they bring an inspiring sense of engagement to their music-making, certainly reflecting their commitment to studying in a program devoted to early music. Their playing is marked by clarity, liveliness, spontaneity, and expressive contrasts that are sometimes exaggerated in a ‘rhetorical’ style that captures the spirit of the Baroque style. Second, their programming strikes an effective balance between stylistic variety and demonstrating relationships and patterns of influence among works—here, oriented around the Italian and French styles and mixing instrumental and vocal genres.Their presentation, both in performance and programming, seems calculated to disprove any prejudices that Baroque music is somehow less expressive or passionate than Romantic music (think Beethoven, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, and Brahms). Baroque music is not only outwardly extravagant and dramatic, but as Juilliard415 beautifully demonstrated, it is vitally ‘open’to the creative imagination and participation of the performers.