Eric GratzPhoto: Chance James

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Bach’s Chaconne — a vessel waiting to be filled

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Olmos Ensemble,  Eric Gratz: Symphony’s new concertmastermoonlights in Mozart Aug. 19, 2014

November 5, 2014 An all-baroque (loosely speaking) concert under the Olmos Ensemble aegis, Nov. 3 in First Unitarian Universalist Church, provided another opportunity to take the measure of the San Antonio Symphony’s new concertmaster, Eric Gratz. Playing with the Olmos for the first time last August, Mr. Gratz had contributed impressively to the performances of two Mozart works.  This time out, his vehicles were works by J.S. Bach — the Sonata sopra il Soggetto Reale from A Musical Offering and the forever-astonishing Chaconne from the Partita No. 2 in D Minor for unaccompanied violin. In the Sonata, joined by the superbly poised Martha Long (flute) and the excellent continuo of Joseph Causby (harpsichord) and Ignacio Gallego (cello), Mr. Gratz revealed a fine grasp of baroque style. He introduced just a hint of vibrato here and there where it was really needed, relying instead on the shaping of dynamics to lend expressiveness to sustained notes. As in his previous appearance, his playing was rhythmically alert and scrupulously in tune. His tone was huge, lively, sweet on top, gutsy on the bottom and, as before, a shade too aggressive. Most important, his performance was fun, not just an academic exercise.  In the Chaconne, Mr. Gratz demonstrated a command of all the considerable technical means the piece requires. His was a young man’s performance, full of vigor, athleticism and snap. The abundant triple and quadruple stops rang out clearly.  But some passages, especially in the early going, wanted a sense of purpose, and Mr. Gratz left the emotional possibilities of the music largely untouched. For a violinist still in his early 20s, that isn’t a fault so much as an inevitability.  Some writers have heard in the Chaconne a memorial to Bach’s first wife, Maria Barbara, who died unexpectedly in July of 1720 while he was accompanying his employer, Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen, on vacation in Carlsbad. I haven’t seen definitive evidence that the piece was composed after that devastating loss rather than before, but it’s hard not to hear a cry from the depths in the opening statement’s trudging motion and in its melodic arc, a questioning upward leap followed by a gradual resigned descent. The quarter-hour that follows, essentially a series of improvisations on the opening theme, is a vessel that expands to contain all the life experience the interpreter can bear to pour into it. It can be taken as axiomatic that Mr. Gratz will have more  to say about the Chaconne in 10 years, and more still in 20 or 40.  Renia Shterenberg was the excellent violinist in the concert’s opening and closing works, by Georg Philipp Telemann and Johann Christian Bach, respectively. In Telemann’s Trio Sonata in G Minor for oboe, violin and continuo, Mark Ackerman produced his customarily lovely oboe tone, though his dexterity seemed challenged in quick passages. Like much of Telemann’s music, the piece was pleasant but generic.  Christian Bach, Sebastian’ youngest son and Mozart’s teacher, took music in a new direction — simpler, more melodic and more accessible than his father’s contrapuntal complexity and mathematically rigorous forms. To follow the older Bach’s Chaconne with the younger’s Quintet in D for flute, oboe, violin, cello and harpsichord was to induce a kind of musical whiplash, like jumping from bop to doo-wop. The performance, at any rate, was spirited and well-prepared.  Mike Greenberg  

Olmos Ensemble