Musica Antiqua Koln

Me, various members of my extended family had to privilege of attending Musica Antiqua Koln's concert in Singapore at Victoria Concert Hall last Thursday evening. It turned out to be a superb performance of baroque period music by a quintet of 2 violins, 1 cello, 1 double bass and a harpsichord. The harpsichord was what I liked best because it is rarely heard in performance in Singapore. As a little aside, my friend who was from the organising team that brought them into Singapore, has the task of transporting this harpsichord up to Macau for the concert there this Sunday.

I have to confess, that I have a very narrow band of classical music that I like and will listen to, and an even narrower band of tolerance for live performances. I do not have a particularly sensitive ear for classical music. And I was never a very good music students particularly at composing. While doing music exams, the part I I knew I had no clue at was composing a few small bars...I would simply put notes together almost at random and hope that my music teacher would declare it music. Fortunately for me, most of the other parts of the exam were very analytical so I could get past those as a swot.

The one great classical composer that I do understand to some degree however, is JS Bach. For some reason I react to him as I do to virtually no other composer and I am very particular about intepretations of his works as a result. To me, his music has an undertone which is always there of the joy of creation. It is for me a deeply catholic work, written by a man who understood the deep stability of creation being held lovingly in God's hand. I hear it most clearly in his smaller pieces...pieces that were written not as large orchestral pieces but small groups or even just the one player. I hear it in his brandenbery concertos, in the inventions, in the concertos etc. I think it is because I tend to like smaller groups of people in general. I love Glenn Gould and yes, I can hear him humming in some of the recordings.

The musica antiqua koln's performance was technically superb as I would have expected. And I predictably reacted best to the Bach pieces. Nevertheless, I think in order for me to fully appreciate their intepretations of Bach, I might have to listen to some of their recordings. Somehow I find I'm a lot more sensitive to recorded music. Perhaps it is simply because I need more time to decide whether or not a piece will really grow on me or not. But yes, Bach has been with me since childhood listenings of Walter (now Wendy)Carlos on the Moog synthesizer on a vinyl LP. I have listened to that umpteen times and it was with regret that i realise that the new recordings on the supposedly improved moog synthesizer do not somehow have the same emotional depth of intepretation despite the new sounds.

Reactions from my family to it varied: for some, like my 7 year old nephew it was their first time ever hearing a chamber group live. Worth at least that experience and I actually rather suspect he has probably a better sensitivity to music than I do since although he looked like he slept through the second half, he came out with some intelligent comments on it the day after.

To those who are interested, this is the link to Antiqua Musica Koln's site
http://www.musica-antiqua-koeln.de/