Friday’s concert featuring soprano Suzie LeBlanc and her brilliant colleagues was a prime example of the fact that we are living in a classical music heyday.
Three aspects of the concert brought this into sharp focus for me: the historical instruments described by Chloe Meyers, Suzie LeBlanc’s vocal techniques, and the composers whose names I had never heard before Friday.
I can remember a time when classical music performance was dominated by the big names—Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and the like, all played on modern instruments in the familiar current style. Music like Friday’s would not have been heard anywhere.
The 1970s and 1980s brought a new interest in historically informed performance and period instruments. The goal was a performance as similar as possible to the way it would have sounded in the time of the composer.
The resulting research brought us the light, agile, up-tempo music that we heard from Chloe, Grégoire, and Alex. It was displayed in Suzie’s ability to create exquisite beauty out of highly ornamented melodies sung with minimal vibrato and pinpoint accuracy.
Not so many decades ago, such performances would not have been found anywhere. Nor would we have heard the profusion of great composers brought back to life from society’s collective amnesia. Once upon a time, the great J.S. Bach was nearly forgotten, only to have a revival of his vast repertoire sparked by Mendelssohn in 1829.
That process has only continued and proliferated. A year ago, Molly Carr performed a program of all female composers highlighting the wonderful talents of artists such as the British Rebecca Clarke or the American Amy Beach. Last month Jeneba Kanneh-Mason performed the music of the nearly forgotten Black composers Florence Price and William Grant Still.
Such discoveries have only spurred the research that has recovered ever more musical treasures from potential oblivion. The Chiaconna by Bernardo Storace played so remarkably by Alex Weimann on the harpsichord or the jaunty sonata by Tarquinio Merula that closed the program are two examples.
The world of classical music is expanding in many directions. We heard the evidence on Friday. We truly are living in a musical heyday.
John Wiebe - President
The Valley Concert Society