Review: Academy of Ancient Music: Transatlantic Classical Masters: Nunes Garcia, Mozart, Haydn - West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge
The latest concert in The Academy of Ancient Music’s current Transformation series featured a now little-mentioned but nevertheless important composer who rose from childhood poverty in Brazil to great national distinction in music.
The subject of AAM’s concert at West Road on Wednesday evening (12 March) under the direction of Laurence Cummings was José Maurici Nunes Garcia, who was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1767.
A singer, composer, and a musician who played viola and harpsichord, Garcia showed prodigious talent in childhood, was giving music lessons at the age of twelve years, and writing for the cathedral in Rio at sixteen.
At age twenty-four he had identified a vocation for the priesthood, usually forbidden to people of colour, something officially described in one document of the times as “a visible physical defect”.
Garcia, however, successfully petitioned against the rule, claiming exemption because of his many talents and a sound reputation of moral fitness for ordination. He was duly ordained a priest in 1792.
He then contributed his gifts to a school which he set up for the musical education of children and in 1798 was appointed chapel master of Rio’s cathedral.
These were turbulent times in Europe, Lisbon fell to Napoleon and the Portuguese royal family fled to Brazil and set up a royal chapel in exile in Rio.
There were initial tensions between the Portuguese clergy who had followed the Royal Family into exile and enjoyed the privileges of inclusion in the chapel, and local figures in orders resented as members of it mainly because of their race and colour.
Eventually a decree was made admitting all musicians of the cathedral to the status of members of the royal institution.
In 1808 Garcia was appointed music master of the royal chapel, thus eventually coming to occupy the highest ranking musical position in the Portuguese Empire.
The concert opened with Garcia’s Overture in D major with some fine playing in the wind section, the composer showing affinities and familiarity here with the work of both Rossini and Haydn, especially the latter’s so-called ‘London’ symphonies.
Laurence Cummings in a pre-concert talk for the audience said that the Overture had a lot of orchestration to enjoy and that it was “fun to play”.
Following on was Garcia’s Dilexisti Justitiam (1798), a setting of Psalm 45:7 (and not, incidentally, as wrongly given in the programme Psalm 44:8) a paean to the loving nature of God who “loves righteousness” and “hatest wickedness”.
Along with her many other distinguished roles, Katherine Spencer is principal clarinet with the Academy of Ancient Music and stepped forward to perform Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A major on a newly-commissioned basset clarinet.
There is no extant example of this instrument, only an old sketch which features it. And before she performed Katherine explained to the audience that it plays lower notes than are to be found on a normal clarinet.
She said it was very hard to hold, it puts up a kind of resistance and its balance seems “all wrong”.
But despite these issues she said that there is something other-worldly and mystical about its sound and she had very much enjoyed being a participant in a mixture of the combined efforts of writer, composer and maker in its construction.
It is known that Mozart had a great love for this instrument, and the evening’s performance was another ground-breaking AAM event in more than one respect.
Laurence Cummings said that the joy of discovery and finding something new in experiences such as listening to the Clarinet Concerto on this new instrument, as though a new piece of music, was very much part of what they do as an ensemble, where one discovery constantly feeds into another.
Mozart’s work is very familiar and one whose infinitely plaintive second movement has the additional sadness of being the last completed instrumental work before his death.
Katherine Spencer was simply perfection – flawless. There can have been few performances, if any, to equal this one.
Her silences were almost as exquisite as the music she created. The audience was rapt and the shouts of appreciation lingered.
“How do you follow that?” asked Laurence Cummings.
The concerto was succeeded by Katherine’s accompaniment of the chorus who sang Garcia’s Tantum Ergo, an ancient Catholic chant of praise sung at the devotional ritual of ‘Benediction’ where the Holy Sacrament is elevated and displayed in a Monstrance (a ‘showing’) for veneration.
Garcia’s extraordinarily beautiful writing for the clarinet obligato was again performed to perfection by Katherine.
After the interval the concert proceeded with another medieval and ritualistic devotional work dedicated to the Blessed Sacrament: Mozart’s Ave verum Corpus - ‘hail true body’.
The ‘Ave verum’ is often sung at the Elevation of the Host at Mass, and again, there is an added poignancy in that it is a composition written within the last six months of the composer’s life.
The next piece, Haydn’s Notturno in G major, was one of a set of pieces Haydn had written for Ferdinand IV, King of Naples, themes from which are identifiable in some of his symphonic work.
The concert drew to a conclusion with Garcia’s Litany of the Sorrows of Our Lady (1794).
Litanies are lengthy devotional sequences involving a lead statement followed by a repeated response, eg “Refuge of the abandoned – Pray for us”, “Shield of the oppressed – Pray for us”.
Garcia’s music for this Litany was expressive and moving, deserving of the highest standing among choral compositions of this kind.
It is known that Garcia studied the works of Mozart, and was familiar with Haydn, which is why the composers had their place in this programme.
But an acknowledgement of Garcia’s right to be prominently placed within the broader context is long overdue.
Sigismond Neukomm, a pupil of Haydn who taught Mozart’s son music and was a friend of Mendelssohn, remarked of Garcia that “we must draw Europe’s attention to the stature of this man”.
On Wednesday evening The Academy of Ancient Music obliged by giving his work its perfect platform.
