THE CITY MUSICK
at Grace Lutheran Church, River Forest
I don’t mean to pick on Wikman, for I suspect that when Banks comes to Bach’s Saint John Passion next month, she won’t be able to bring to that piece half of what Wikman can. Wikman has a wonderful understanding of Bach and makes a superb case for it–even if you don’t agree with it. Banks has done very little Bach, and what she has done has been credible. But she doesn’t have the special affinity for him that she has for Mozart. In fact, I honestly don’t know of a single great interpreter of the one who was or is also a great interpreter of the other. There are plenty of people who do credible, generic interpretations of both, but no true masters of both. Only Bach and Mozart represent perfection in music. Perhaps in a lifetime one is permitted a great understanding of only one–though performers who can do even one on that level are rare. We are quite lucky to have a fine interpreter of each in Chicago, for there are bigger cities that don’t have one.
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David Schrader, like Banks, is a master Mozart interpreter. When he performs a Mozart piano concerto, he also plays continuo during the non-solo passages, a standard 18th-century practice. That, together with his subtle and poetic approach, means the fortepiano doesn’t jump out at you the way a modern piano usually does. So even with the upper register of his instrument painfully out of tune, this was still a special performance.
The “Great” but unfinished C-minor Mass fared considerably better. Though Wikman’s chorus can’t approach Banks’s for clear diction and elegant phrasing, its sections are strong and balanced. In fact, Wikman seemed to be carried away by the sheer sound of the chorus, and often let it overpower everything else. The tempi were slow, though not quite the funeral marches of the symphony, and the solo quartet was unbalanced in its projection, timbre, and technique. Bedi (who else?) was the soprano and demonstrated her usual genius with this music. The “Et incarnatus est,” though more stylishly sung by her last spring with City Musick, couldn’t help but be a beautiful moment; it made the entire evening more bearable.
