(Photo: Clemens Manser)

One of the highlights of this year’s Bayreuth Baroque Festival was a concert entitled “Terra Mater,” directed and designed by Christina Pluhar, featuring the L’Arpeggiata ensemble and mezzo-soprano Malena Ernman. The concert was an exploration of 17th and 18th century musical representations of nature in its many forms, interpreted from a 21st century perspective by the performers. The concert included pieces by Händel, Monteverdi and Biber, among others, as well as traditional English folk ballads and dances. The performance of each piece, while founded clearly within the tradition and firmly in line with the composer’s intentions, was often allowed to move into new areas, taking in more contemporary styles, including elements of jazz and folk music.

The Beauty of Nature in Music

It was a concert that aimed at capturing the spirit of nature, ranging from the sounds of birdsong and animals to seascapes and storms to pastoral scenes that included images of simple rural life, in an attempt to reflect nature’s beauty in a way that other art forms are rarely able to realize.

The concert started with an intriguing, atmospherically strong rendition of “Der Nachtigall” by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, which, with its unusual qualities, set the tone for the rest of the performance. The sound of the nightingale was captured by a whistle, played against a thin accompaniment that included rustling noises from the percussion and an engaging melody on the violin.

There were a number of other instrumental pieces that also mimicked the sound of animals. Tarquino Merula’s piece for violin and basso continuo, called “Die Henne,” was given an amusing and convincing rendition, in which the two violins created the sound of a noisy chicken in a variety of moods. A cuckoo could clearly be heard in Biber’s “Der Kuckoo,” while an expressively surreal-sounding frog, captured by the percussion, made an appearance in his piece called “De Frosch,” which was given an imaginative contemporary-sounding interpretation.

Ernman also entered the fun with a number of vocal pieces that incorporated birdsong, including a lively presentation of Thomas Arne’s “When Daisies Pied (The Cuckoo),” which allowed Ernman to show off her clear, articulate phrasing, beautiful coloring and skills in mimicking the cuckoo that was clearly echoed by the cornet. There was a rendition of “Son Rossignol” (The Nightingale) by Pietro Torri, in which the nightingale’s call could be heard on the whistle and elaborated in Erman’s expressive ornamentations and coloratura, supported by the beauty of the melody in the strings. Another nightingale could be heard in Francesco Gasparini’s “Senti quell’usignolo” in an amusing, colourful presentation, in which Ernman entered into an energetic dialogue with the ensemble that was full of bird sound and pleasing ornamentations from both parties. At one point, there was even a Valkyrie “Hojotoho” or two included in the conversation.

Of course, not all pieces related directly to animal noises. The orchestra ensemble brilliantly captured the energy and sound of a raging storm in Georg Caspar Schürmann’s “Sinfonia pour la tempête,” while Ernman’s finely crafted rendition of Händel’s English song “T’was When the Seas Were Roaring,” accompanied only by the plucked strings of a double bass and the blasts from a wind machine, captured the suffering of losing a lover to the sea.

There was a beautifully rendered instrumental version of Monteverdi’s “O come sei gentile” from his “7th Book of Madrigals,” which allowed the musicians of “L’Arpeggiata” to confirm their excellence in the baroque repertoire with a traditional and refined reading, the melody of which could be interpreted as birdsong, although there was no direct mimicking of a bird. Similarly, there was no attempt to mimic the sound of a swan in Giulio Taglietti’s mournful piece, “Il canto del cigno,” which successfully captured the reflective sadness of a dying swan, in which the emotional depth was beautifully crafted on the cello. One of the highlights of the concert was an excellent arrangement of a chaconne by Maurizio Cazzati, which was performed with a wonderful sense of freedom, infused with an energetic drive, vibrancy and feeling of joy, and presented with a contemporary slant that hinted at folk and jazz influences.

Interspersed through the program were three traditional English dance tunes taken from “The English Dance Master,” published by John Playford and arranged by Christine Pluhar. L’Arpeggiata immersed themselves fully into their spirit of the pieces, in which the dance “Newcastle” stood out; the rhythmic drive and excitement generated by the violinists was truly breathtaking. One could be forgiven for thinking that the performance had morphed into a concert of Appalachian folk music; all that was missing was the clog dancers. Two traditional English folk ballads were also included, both arranged by Pluhar. In “The Frog and the Mouse” Ernman produced an amusing presentation, in which she mimicked the frog, both vocally and physically, as she croaked and burped her way through the song while taking up the posture of a squatting frog. In the second ballad, “The Taylor and the Mouse,” Ernman resisted the temptation to imitate the mouse, opting instead for an expressive piece of storytelling that was thoroughly engaging.

There were also a couple of arias that enabled Ernman to show off her voice in a more traditional manner. Her presentation of Giuseppe Maria Orlandini’s aria “Muore del Cigno” from his opera “Nerone” was beautifully delivered to highlight the delightful melody while drawing attention to the flexibility and alluring colors of her voice, while Händel’s aria “Crude furie degli orridi abissi” from his opera “Serse” showed off her more emotionally aggressive side as she pushed herself towards the limits of her voice with an expressively strong performance.

In all, it proved to be an innovative, exciting and thoroughly entertaining concert that overflowed with beautiful music, nicely attuned to the theme of the natural world and its connection with the human condition. Following the final piece, the audience showed its appreciation with a period of loud, sustained applause. The artists responded with three encores, none of which fitted easily with the music that had gone before, even if it aligned with the concert’s theme and Pluhar’s eclectic approach. The first was Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Flight of the Bumble Bee,” followed by a song by Sting and a piece by Eden Abhez, called “Nature Boy,” which managed to quieten the audience.

A Final Thought

On a final note, it was slightly disappointing that the program notes focused on global warming, not because it is not a serious danger that affects everyone, but because the superficial views expressed simply confirmed that it is not being taken seriously enough. The text amounted to little more than a series of platitudes and virtue signaling. Global warming is not a cause but one of the consequences. Rather, it is overconsumption, growing income inequality and an obsession with economic growth and material possessions that are driving the world to environmental catastrophe. None of which were referenced in the program. And the idea of traveling by train instead of flying hardly amounts to a gesture, much less to an actual solution.

It is beauty, particularly as found in music and nature, that is able to uplift the human condition, and this is the message that lay at the heart of the concert, not superficial musings about global warming, no matter how important that may be. It was unfortunate that I read the program before the concert, as its irritating words remained at the back of my mind.