CELEBRATIONS GALORE FOR BACH FEST

Promptly at 7:30 on most concert nights during three weeks in July, a brass ensemble mounts the terrace facing the Sunset Center Theater here and plays for 15 minutes. The experience of hearing that miniconcert--out of doors at twilight and surrounded by the scents and sights of this forested town by the ocean--is one of the charms of attending the Carmel Bach Festival.

The festival--which ends today--should be in its 51st incarnation this summer; the motto, “Founded in 1935 by Dene Denny and Hazel Watrous,” still graces every brochure and program book. In fact, the intervention of World War II caused a hiatus of three years, and the festival of 1985 is only the 48th.

Yet the 50th anniversary is being noted proudly--along with, of course, the tricentennials of J. S. Bach, George Frideric Handel and Domenico Scarlatti, and the 400th anniversary of Heinrich Schuetz.

Returning to the Monterey Peninsula, most Californians must experience a unique sense of deja vu. For most of us, the place holds special, personal, indelible memories.

“Ah, the smell of pines and affluence!” one longtime peninsula visitor describes the feeling. But it is more.

The gift shops along Ocean Avenue, and radiating outward on nearby streets. Dozens of little restaurants ready to serve the steady stream of visitors that flows through the small downtown area. The lure of the Pacific Ocean, just down the hill, not to mention attractions in Pacific Grove and Monterey and, just over the hill, on California 1. These are familiar and reassuring artifacts of ourpersonal and collective memories.

They do not change, at least not a lot, and not quickly. A favorite country-French restaurant, one notes, has now become another, also-provincial, French restaurant with a pun for a name, and, on its menu, prix fixe spelled “pre-fix.” A fabled village steakhouse has closed; on the same spot, a more pretentious dining room welcomes a new generation. Nearby, Carmel City Hall is being renovated, refurbished and enlarged.

But change is slow. Where there are no sidewalks, none are going in. Where street lighting is minimal, darkness continues to prevail. Quaintness, a monumental quaintness, reigns benignly.

In this atmosphere of mellow but willful individuality, the survival of the Carmel Bach Festival seems perfectly congruent, its longevity and slow growth almost predictable.

Yet another anniversary, that of Sandor Salgo’s 30th season as music director and conductor, is observed in 1985. In some ways, it may outshadow the other milestones.

When Salgo assumed this podium in 1956, the “Magnificat” had never been performed in its entirety here, the bulk of festival personnel were strictly local, the repertory scattered.

The former professor at Stanford University instituted the tradition of presenting the B-minor Mass in odd-numbered years and the “St. Matthew” and “St. John” Passions in alternating even-numbered years. He engaged solo artists from the East Coast and from Europe. He extended the two-weekend format to 10 days in 1961, then to its present length of three full weeks.

During this same time, he brought to the festival high standards of professionalism and a cognizance of recent scholarship in performance-practice. As musician and conductor, he has not stood still.

For a quick survey of the 1985 festival, one musical journalist traveled to Carmel July 18, and attended four major weekend concerts in Sunset Center Theater, plus peripheral daytime recitals around the peninsula. It could be no surprise that the musical standards at this festival remain high. What was surprising was that the feeling at the festival is much the same in enthusiasm and concentration as two decades ago.

The climax of any festival week here is the Sunday afternoon performance. In 1985, that set of performances is devoted to the Mass in B minor. Heard July 21, it reiterated the particular and continuing strengths of conductor Salgo and his colleagues, the principal ones being the Festival Chorale and Chorus, concertmaster Rosemary Waller, flutist Louise DiTullio, oboist Michael Rosenberg and vocal soloists Sylvia McNair, Patricia Schuman, Alyce Rogers, Gregory Wait and Douglas Lawrence.

Compared to the mercurial, transparent, serene and breathtaking performance Helmuth Rilling and his Oregon Bach Festival ensembles gave in Hollywood Bowl, this one proved deliberate, opaque, sculpted and planned-out--undeniably well-wrought but not really heartfelt. The all-important pause between, “. . . et sepultus est ,” and “ et resurrexit ,” for example, seemed dramatically contrived rather than dramatically motivated--as if the conductor had chosen to measure out his pause, not, in the theatrical sense, to seize it.

Still, all the parts fell into place, and some gorgeous sounds were made. The Chorale and Chorus, plus the instrumental soloists, produced most of these, but the vocal soloists--in particular the three women--contributed as well.

Accomplished vocalism also marked the Friday and Saturday night events. Handel’s penultimate Italian opera, “Imeneo” (Hymeneus), in a deft concert staging by Albert Takazauckas, took the Sunset Center Theater stage Friday.

It is a most handsome piece by a composer in his prime, and contradicts in its best moments that old professor’s tale that opera seria is boring and predictable. Heard in an English translation, it charms by its melodiousness, its wit and its emotional truth.

Salgo led a stylish, crisp and bright performance, one helped strongly by the deceptive simplicity of Takazauckas’ on-target staging.

For the most part, the young cast, led by Patricia Schuman, and Evelyn de la Rosa, sang splendidly. Schuman’s delivery of Rosmene’s arias displayed a radiant and plangent voice of strong flexibility; De la Rosa sailed easily through the lesser hurdles given Clomiris. Brenda Boozer made a petulant Tirinthus, James Busterud a promising, stage-worthy Hymeneus.

Saturday night, the concerto/cantata program conducted by Salgo started off as a pleasant showcase for violinist Christiane Edinger (Bach’s E-major Concerto) and singers Alyce Rogers, Gregory Wait and Douglas Lawrence (Cantata 106). Then it became the occasion for high jinks from soprano Sylvia McNair, soloist in Cantata 202, “Weichet nur, betruebte Schatten.”

McNair, according to several reports, had swept all before her at the Wednesday night (July 17) Mission concert, singing the cantata, “Jauchzet Gott.” The next morning, according to our informants, tutta Carmel was abuzz with praise for the soprano from Ohio who now sings in West Berlin and St. Louis.

In her Saturday night appearance, McNair seemed vocally tired. Yet her prima-donna mannerisms proved intact. Wearing a white gown decorated with blocks of gold, she mugged relentlessly through this Wedding Cantata, all the while bouncing to its rhythms.

Then, in the final Gavotte, when she had finished singing, McNair handed her score to Salgo, twirled in time to the music, then did a step with the conductor. The audience was charmed--but not so much that it demanded an encore. McNair and Salgo took one anyway, repeating the final movement.

After that demonstration of self-hypnotism, and intermission, Emile Naoumoff’s pedestrian performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C, K. 503, became anticlimactic.

Mildly disappointing, for the promises it did not fulfill, was Igor Kipnis’ appearance at the Thursday evening concert (July 18).

The veteran harpsichordist displayed again his solid technique and musical ingenuity. But his penchant for quick, unarticulated tempos and noncommittal, undifferentiated approaches to what ought to be contrasting pieces (by Handel, Bach and Scarlatti, whom he called “The Birthday Boys”), left most of this evening without the kinds of projection this music should abound in.

Kipnis puts up only one barrier between himself and his audience, but that is an impenetrable one--the printed scores, to which he refers constantly and irritatingly. Through this barrier, little music gets through.

A sampling of the three daytime recitals offered in this long weekend netted some special, and some questionable, moments.

Peter Rejto’s authoritative way with Bach’s C-minor Suite (he played the complete suites during these three weeks) illuminated the Friday (July 19) morning recital in the gloom of the Golden Bough Theater.

But Alyce Rogers’ singing of five English songs by Haydn emerged only pleasant; the mezzo-soprano from Oregon failed to delineate the emotional states of these songs, and displayed no compelling reason for their inclusion on this program. At the harpsichord, Elaine Thornburgh proved unsteady of tempo, pushy about breathing with the singer and textually disinterested.

Ken Ahrens’ brief but masterfully executed Bach recital, in Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Monterey, Friday afternoon, offered contrast and integration in a program beginning with the Prelude and Fugue in B minor and ending with the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor.

Strong feelings about Bach emerged in Emile Naoumoff’s hourlong piano recital in Sunset Theater, Saturday morning (July 20), the best part of which was his playing of four Preludes and Fugues from “Das Wohl-Temperirte Clavier,” Books I and II. Though there was nothing Baroque about these readings, they at least displayed a musical and sensitive temperament, and a poetic response to Bach’s pieces.

Otherwise, in important works of Mozart (the D-minor Fantasy and the A-minor Sonata), the 23-year old French pianist showed little individuality.