Heavenly Bach: a key Largo

Under the right circumstances, the Largo movement of Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto No. 5, in which an otherworldly melodic line floats weightlessly over delicately plucked strings, can make me feel at one with the starry sky. I’m not alone. Glenn Gould, a transcendental musician if there ever was one, chose that movement when asked to supply a soundtrack for the film “Slaughterhouse Five.” His own sublime performance of it becomes the music for drifting off into outer space.

But the right circumstances are strange ones. First off, to leave the earth we must ignore history. It won’t work with the harpsichord of Bach’s day, it’s tone is too thin, metallic and fleeting to overcome gravity. You need a musical rocket, a piano. You need deliciously thick strings in the background. And you need a soloist who can make you feel as though the notes have magical power.

Peter Serkin, who came to UCLA to play all of Bach’s concertos for keyboard Friday and Saturday nights, is such a pianist. He was accompanied during the two-concert marathon by the Brandenberg Ensemble, conducted by violinist Jaime Laredo. The performances went against much of what musicologists have taught us about historically informed performance practice over the last 30 years. It was a peculiar, and brave, undertaking that did not unconditionally convince. But when it came to the Largo, for this listener, the Royce Hall roof opened, the clouds parted and Saturday night’s stormy sky transformed into a glittering starscape.

Bach’s seven keyboard concertos are themselves transformations. They are mostly arrangements of music Bach wrote for sacred cantatas, church music served up in the coffee house where Bach apparently performed as recreation with fellow string players. The reworkings are ingenious, and these concertos are credited as the principle influence for the development, down the historical line, of the piano concerto.

Admired and loved as they are, the concertos are only rarely or successfully played in public. The recent Los Angeles Philharmonic performance of one by pianist Andras Schiff was a rarity. The piano and modern strings can seem leaden in comparison with the colorful, fleet and often dramatic performances with harpsichord and period instruments. And period instruments sound a lot better in the close quarters of a coffee house than they do in a concert hall. Murray Perahia has also recently bucked the trend by making the music seem pure sweet cream in his recent recordings.

For the performance by Serkin and Laredo over the weekend, an orchestra of young string players played their modern instruments full bore. Serkin’s piano was placed in the back of the orchestra, as if he were one of the band, but he played boldly.

There were weird anachronisms. Laredo’s conducting could sometimes seem leaden to 21st century ears. The ensemble was not always polished. Laredo’s own playing is rougher than it was when he made his great recording of the Bach violin sonatas with Gould nearly 30 years ago. For a continuo, he combined a robust modern double bass with an inaudible harpsichord.

The “Brandenburg” Concertos Nos. 3 and 5, as well as the Concerto for Flute, Violin, Keyboard and Strings that Bach only partially wrote, generously filled up the programs. For the Third “Brandenburg,” Laredo conducted from the violin and here he had the violins and violas stand, as fiddlers in Bach’s day would have. The score has no slow movement, so he interpolated one from a Bach violin sonata that he played with Serkin.

Perhaps the most interesting contrast was between these enthusiastic young players and the serene Serkin. I don’t know what religion, if any, the pianist subscribes to, but his playing has the remarkable quality of Buddhist devotion. He dedicates himself to the notes, surmounting performer’s ego. But he is not severe. Indeed, at times he could even appear the showy virtuoso of olden days. He played that extraordinary passage of the Fifth “Brandenburg” where the piano commandeers the first movement with the kind of alluring virtuosic abandon that would unnerve most historically inhibited Bach players today.

The concertos were not played in order, and the series ended with the Sixth, a reworking of the Fourth “Brandenburg.” It adds two flutes to the strings, here Tara Helen O’Connor (soloist in the Fifth “Brandenburg” and the Triple Concerto) and Barry J. Crawford. It was an aggressive performance but a joyful one. The fugal last movement is the Bach who puts a spring in your step, and it was as if Serkin and Laredo had passed out pogo sticks.