2021 Boston Early Music Festival and Fringe
Ensemble Correspondances performing in an empty theater for BEMF 2021
For fans of music composed before 1800, June means the return of the Early Music Festival, held either in Boston (odd-numbered years) or Berkeley (even-numbered years). This being an odd year the 2021 concerts are being sponsored by the Boston Early Music Festival (BEMF). Given the COVID strictures against gathering indoors and international travel, and the lead time involved in planning a major event of this type, BEMF elected to produce a virtual festival this year, and carried it off about as well as it can be done.
Let me pay due obeisance to the truth that no recording, no matter how carefully done, can match the auditory experience of a live unamplified performance. Microphones simply can't capture the full richness of voices and instruments resonating in a performing space.
However, cameras, if they are thoughtfully directed, can provide a much better view of the proceedings than a typical concert seat can provide, and can direct your attention to key details. (Closeups of musicians playing can reveal aspects of their technique, and also the workmanship of their beautiful antique or antique-copy instruments.) As my partner points out, you don't have to worry about the tallest person in the audience or the person with the biggest hair taking the seat right in front of you. And, I might add, you don't have to put up with other people's coughing fits (always timed to occur at the most hushed and emotionally significant moments), mood-shattering cellphone ringtones (ditto), or running commentary. [1]
The considerations of viral invulnerability, the absence of audience irritants, and the sheer convenience of being able to see distant concerts from our cozy living room would be more than sufficient to convince us to watch. But in addition some groups have really mastered the medium of the video concert, offering commentary before the concert or sometimes interspersed with the musical performances, English-language captioning for vocal music, camerawork that subtly enhances the musical experience, and beautiful concert locations.
Below I've listed my personal highlights from BEMF as well as the Festival Fringe. One thing to note is that we haven't seen all of the BEMF or Fringe concerts, so I recommend exploring the offerings on your own. You'll undoubtedly find something to your taste that I haven't mentioned; full schedules are linked at the end of the post.
BEMF makes each concert available for viewing any number of times from the moment of its premiere until Sunday July 11, for the commendably affordable price of $10 per concert. It's a model that might be advantageously adopted by other performing arts groups. Fringe concerts, as well as BEMF pre-concert talks (and several BEMF events), are free. Both BEMF and many of the individual groups welcome donations.
Boston Early Music Festival concerts (turning on the captions for vocal selections is recommended):
Lucile Richardot and Sébastian Daucé of Ensemble Correspondances
This exquisite concert can be viewed for free through July 11. Programs of 17th century English songs often focus on a few major figures such as John Blow and Henry Purcell. While of course they are included here, one of the many excellences of this concert is that Richardot and Ensemble Correspondances director Sébastian Daucé have constructed a varied program that also includes less often performed music by composers such as John Banister, Robert Johnson, and William Lawes, as well as songs for both solo singer and vocal ensemble. Richardot has a striking voice with an especially rich lower range, and the accompaniments and instrumental pieces are sensitively performed. Did I mention that it's free? This program has also been released as an album on Harmonia Mundi.
Cinquecento: A Requiem for Josquin
Achim Schulz, Terry Wey, Bernd Oliver Fröhlich (guest vocalist), Ulfried Staber, Tore Tom Denys, and Tim Scott Whiteley of Cinquecento
Filmed in the Vienna Imperial Chapel and marking the 500th anniversary of the death of the composer Josquin Desprez, this thoughtful and illuminating program by the all-male vocal group Cinquecento is filled with gorgeous polyphony. A 16th-century document names Jean Richafort as one of the numerous 'students' of Josquin, probably meaning that he took Josquin's music as a model for his own. This program illustrates that process by presenting Richafort's haunting six-voice Requiem in memory of Josquin along with the music by Josquin that is quoted in the Requiem. This program has also been released as an album on Hyperion.
Amanda Forsythe, soprano, and BEMF Chamber Ensemble: Handel as Orpheus
Amanda Forsythe with David Morris (violoncello) and Paul O'Dette (theorbo) of the BEMF Chamber Ensemble
Over the past decade or more Amanda Forsythe has been frequently featured in BEMF concerts, operas and recordings, and for good reason: her performances are extraordinary. This program focuses on the spectacular cantatas Handel wrote during the four years he spent in Italy as a young man. Often in the voices of mythical or legendary women who have been condemned, rejected or abandoned, the cantatas feature moving laments and florid coloratura runs signalling emotional agitation. Although none of the pieces in this program have to my knowledge been recorded by Forsythe, she has recorded an album of Handel opera arias on the theme of love on the Avie label.
BEMF Vocal & Chamber Ensemble: Tempro la cetra: I tune the lyre
Aaron Sheehan, Jonathan Woody, and Jason McStoots with members of the BEMF Chamber Ensemble
Solos, duets and trios with instrumental accompaniment drawn largely from Monteverdi's Seventh Book of Madrigals and performed by BEMF stars Teresa Wakim (soprano), Reginald Mobley (countertenor), Jason McStoots and Aaron Sheehan (tenors), and Jonathan Woody (bass-baritone). Instrumental interludes by Dario Costello and Andrea Falconieri and a sacred vocal work by Francesca Caccini are also included. (Serving as a wonderful complement to this concert is the recent Cal Performances-sponsored concert by Jordi Savall, La Capella Reial de Catalunya and Le Concert des Nations of Monteverdi's Eighth Book of Madrigals: Madrigals of Love and War, available through September 1.)
ACRONYM: Ad Astra: Music of Valentini, Bertali, Schmelzer, Rosenmüller, and others
Members of ACRONYM Ensemble
ACRONYM is a young, dynamic ensemble of outstandingly talented musicians, and this program is designed to showcase their strengths. A flourishing of creative energy followed the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648 and continued for several decades afterwards. Composers of instrumental music wrote demanding virtuoso pieces exploring unusual techniques, and the ensemble attacks this music with exhilarating intensity and verve.
Fringe Concerts:
All of the groups listed below deserved to appear in the main festival; expect to see some of them performing there in the future.
Red Dot Baroque: Les Goûts-réünis: An Evening of French Baroque Music
Members of Red Dot Baroque
A range of moods (from serene to exuberant) and instrumental groupings (from string quartet to chamber orchestra) are presented in this program of works by Charpentier, Corrette and Rameau. Music of great interest, vividly played.
Byrd Ensemble: New World Polyphony: Treasures from the Cathedral of Mexico City
Members of the Byrd Ensemble
A well-conceived program of works drawn from a single source, the two choirbooks dated 1717 from the Cathedral of Mexico City. The concert opens with compositions by the Old World composers Palestrina, Victoria, and Lobo. The second half introduces works by the 17th- and 18th-century Mexican composers Antonio Rodriguez de Mata, Manuel de Sumaya, and Antonio de Salazar, who were trained in, continued and extended the tradition established by the earlier composers. Markdavin Obenza selected the program (along with Margaret Obenza), directed the accomplished performances of these beautiful and moving works, and acts as our engaging and informative host. He also directed the concert video itself: amazingly, all of the performers recorded their parts separately and were seamlessly combined by Obenza to make it appear as though they were singing together in the beautiful setting of Trinity Parish Church in Seattle.
Alkemie: Sweet Friendship: Courtly Songs & Dances from 15th-century Italy and France
Members of Alkemie
Alkemie is a group of stunningly multi-talented performers who play, sing, and dance a program of 15th-century music on the theme of love's intense pleasures and pains. Gender-bending, polyamorous, and a little racy—the secular songs of the 15th century have a very modern sensibility, enhanced in this concert by the playful English subtitles (Raphael Seligman is credited). Elisa Sutherland's videography misdirects our attention a time or two, but generally is quite striking, as you can see in the preview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL5Txt7z4Qk
A reminder that all of these wonderful concerts and the others available on the BEMF website can be viewed until July 11.
For more information:
- Full schedule of BEMF Concerts 2021
- Full schedule of BEMF Fringe Concerts 2021
- BEMF 2021-22 concert season
- Other joys of attending concerts in person: encountering people who bring their takeout food into the theater and treat the lowering of the lights as a signal to noisily unwrap it and chow down (favoring everyone else in the auditorium not only with the noise but with the pungent smell of their food). Or people who, belching, generously share with their neighbors the rich aromas of their pre-concert dinner. Or people who are eager to share the concert with their friends and followers and raise their cellphones to record the entire thing as soon as the curtain is raised. (Better: people who take photos of the distant, lighted stage with their flash on. Still better: people who, when asked to stop recording/taking photos, berate those making the request for their elitist sense of entitlement.)
Or people who hum or sing along with every familiar tune. Or people with major colds who insist on attending nonetheless and sniffle, snuck and sneeze throughout the performance. (Better: when it's concert by an a capella group.) Or people who think that instrumental music is simply background and blithely continue their pre-concert conversations after the performance has begun.
Or people who wait for the quietest moments to unwrap the crinkly cellophane from their candies. Or people who laugh inappropriately at the performers or other audience members. Or people who fall asleep in the darkness and begin to snore. Or people who emanate a suffocating cloud of manufactured scent blanketing all seats within five rows. Or people who, as soon as the performance seems to be ending, leap up and trample everyone in their row in their haste to leave the theater. And let's not forget the people who loudly shush (or better, issue bodily threats) to those committing any of the previously described crimes. . .
Not, of course, that we've personally experienced audience members behaving in any of these ways. Oh no.
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