The original plan would have been perfect: a March 21 concert featuring Joseph Silverstein performing all the sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Perfect because not only is March 21 Bach's birthday - it's also Silverstein's.Alas, that was not to be. "I have to conduct the Baltimore Symphony that week," the violinist-conductor explains, "and have to be there for a rehearsal on Tuesday morning, and that would have made it a little bit difficult."
Nevertheless Nova Chamber Music Series patrons will get to hear him play those pieces this evening in an unusual one-night presentation of all six at the Museum of Fine Arts.
At least I am not aware of any violinist tackling them in one sitting before, and neither is Silverstein. Even he separated them with a sizable dinner break the last time he played them one afternoon and evening at Yale.
"It was his idea," series director Barbara Scowcroft recalls. "We were discussing the program for this year and he said, `Let's have a Bachfest.' When I asked him how much of a break he'd require, he said, `Oh, give me about half an hour to go out and get a massage.' "
Scowcroft is extending that by around 15 minutes, so that intermission will include not only a break for the performer but refreshments for the patrons. But it's still basically a one-night stand, the concert itself beginning at 7 and ending somewhere around 10:30.
The performing sequence itself will be Sonata No. 1, Partita No. 1, Sonata No. 3, Partita No. 3, Sonata No. 2 and Partita No. 2. That way the evening will conclude with the celebrated Chaconne, generally considered the high point of a set that, even after 274 years, is still regarded as the pinnacle of the violinist's art.
"Their importance seems to grow with each decade," Silver-stein acknowledges. "They are a litmus test of how violinists are judged, and they are referred to as research vehicles by composers of every period."
One such was Brahms, who in a letter to Clara Schumann in 1877 discussed the piece he was enclosing - his own left-hand keyboard transcription of the Chaconne.
"I don't suppose I have ever sent you anything as amusing as what I am sending you today, provided your fingers can survive the pleasure!" he wrote. "The Chaconne is in my opinion one of the most wonderful and most incomprehensible pieces of music. Using the technique adapted to a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I could picture myself writing, or even conceiving, such a piece, I am certain that the extreme excitement and emotional tension would have driven me mad."
Silverstein, by contrast, finds this music brings sanity.
"They are among the very few pieces of music that one can study, restudy, teach and rehear and they remain constantly fresh and challenging," he says. "Which is why the great Pablo Casals into his very late years played at least one of the Bach cello suites every day of his life and said he never tired of one note."
Continuing to incorporate them into his practice sessions has also given Silverstein a renewed appreciation for the baroque violin technique that so amazed Brahms.
"After studying and restudying these pieces on both modern and period equipment, I've come to an interpretive point that is really a combination of what I feel I can do with both instruments," he declares. Mainly, he says, that has to do with bowing, "to approximate the softer articulation of the baroque bow, along with its resilience, without sacrificing the greater dynamic range of the modern bow, along with its much longer effective playing length."
Appropriately, then, he will be performing the sonatas and partitas on what he describes as "a modern instrument made in 1742" - his beloved Guarnerius del Gesu, with which he recorded his Grammy-nominated "Four Seasons" more than a decade ago.
As it happens, that's almost as long as Silverstein's been playing Nova fund-raisers, something he volunteered his services for almost from his very first season as music director of the Utah Symphony. This is the first time, however, that he himself has been the whole show - along, of course, with that other J.S., in this instance Bach.
"I happen to be very fond of the people involved with the Nova Series," Silverstein reflects, "and wanted to do something that would not just be another one of these concerts but would stand apart from the series and attract people apart from those who normally attend.
"Also," he says, "I must admit the idea of playing all six of these for an audience in one evening is something of a major self-indulgence because it is such a great personal challenge." (His wife, Adrienne, reportedly calls it his "Bach Mitzvah.")
"But it's not often you get a chance to labor very, very intensely on something that gives you so much pleasure. Yo-Yo Ma said the same to me when he did all six cello suites in one shot, and Andras Schiff made the same remark when he did the whole `Well-Tempered Clavier.' The endless invention of this music, with its constantly surprising harmonic shifts - it just never gets old."
Tickets to this evening's concert are $20 (with additional contributions welcome), available at the door. For information call 537-7019.