Arts & Events

Berkeley audiences at First Congregational Church welcomed the venerable Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra’s long awaited return to live concertising on Saturday evening, October 16, 2021, after a 19-moth hiatus due to Covid 19. This evening’s program was planned under the leadership of the company’s new Music Director, Richard Eggar, replacing Nicholas McGegan, who led Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra for the last 35 years. In something of a new departure, this concert did not feature the company’s signature involvement in music of the Baroque period, though it did contain one piece by Johann Sebastian Bach. Instead, this concert delved into the mid-19th century Romantic period music of Robert Schumann. And it featured two of Schumann’s less familiar works, his Violin Concerto in D minor, and his Symphony No. 2 in C Major. 

Opening the program, however, was the very last piece of music composed by Johann Sebastian Bach, his “Unfinished Fugue,” entitled Fuga a 3 soggetti or Fugue with 3 Subjects, BWV 1080. In his final days, Bach was writing fugues to show off his mastery of counterpoint. 

Whether the “Unfinished Fugue” was intended to be part of Bach’s compilation The Art of Fugue is a matter of speculation. Unlike the other fugues in that set, this one is not based on the D minor chord. Moreover, its three subjects explore even more complex territory of counterpoint than the other fugues in that set. The third subject contains the motto theme spelling out musically the name BACH (B flat, A, C, B natural or BACH). However, Bach never completed this Fuga a 3 soggetti for, as a note on the score reads in the handwriting of Bach’s son Carl Phillip Emannuel, “At the point where the composer introduces the name BACH to the countersubject, the composer died.” Thus, fittingly, Bach’s final work doesn’t end, it just stops while in progress. 

The bulk of this concert’s program featured two less frequently heard works by Robert Schumann, his notoriously uneven Violin Concerto and his turbulent, often turgid Second Symphony. Conductor Richard Eggar led the orchestra in energetic readings of these two works. Eggar’s conducting style is itself energetic. Using no baton, Eggar waves his arms right and left, pumps them to mark exclamation points, and builds to loud, explosive climaxes with his arms raised high above his head. In these Schumann works, Eggar’s conducting style seems almost blustering, so energetic is it! 

Soloist in the Violin Concerto, Tokyo-born Shuinske Sato, literally tore into this work’s virtuoso passagework. In three movements, the Schumann Violin Concert begins with a lovely cello solo then taken up by the violins. However, this notoriously uneven opening movement is marred by the orchestra’s often bombastic interjections, while the violin soloist, here Shunske Sato, displays his technique in torrid virtuoso style. By contrast, the second movement, a slow Langsam, is gloriously lyrical and is the highlight of the work. The final movement is a jaunty Polonaise ending with a bang. 

After intermission, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra returned to perform Schumann’s Symphony No. 2 in C Major, which opens with a fanfare of trumpets and drums. The C Major key is the same as that of Franz Schubert’s “Great” Symphony No. 9, which Robert Schumann studied in detail. However, the opening movement of Schumann’s Second Symphony is often turgid, always turbulent. In the Allegro section, a buoyant skittering motive briefly lightens the mood. The Scherzo pays homage to Bach by utilising the musical motto of Bach’s name, then inverting it. At the close of this movement, with the reintroduction of Bach’s name motto, the members of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra rose from their seats in homage to Bach, then reseated themselves to close out this movement. The Adagio movement proceeds in relative serenity, though at its close Schumann can’t resist indulging in a bombastic closing statement. 

The final movement seems almost an anomaly in its avoidance of traditional recapitulations, though the opening trumpet fanfare returns, more as a reminder of the earlier turbulence than as a heroic sendoff. Robert Schumann, who at the time he wrote his Second Symphony, was suffering from mental illness due perhaps to syphilis, entered a mental institution shortly after completing this symphony and died there two years later.