NEW YORK – Maybe it’s not surprising to find Baroque music specialist Harry Bicket playing harpsichord with the Diderot String Quartet in a crypt in Harlem. After all, Bicket has been busy conducting a production of Handel’s Agrippina at the Metropolitan Opera that places the work’s action in a mausoleum. The Crypt Sessions, a production of Death of Classical, now in its fifth season, must have seemed like the ideal side gig.
The March 6 concert was called “Journeys” (as in “a journey through Baroque Europe,” according to the program) and took place in the crypt below the Church of the Intercession. When Death of Classical founder and director Andrew Ousley addressed the people enjoying complimentary wine and cheese beforehand, he knew he had a winning line: “It is now time to descend to the crypt.”
The venue holds only 49 people. The Diderot (Baroque violinists Adriane Post and Johanna Novom, violist Kyle Miller, and cellist Paul Dwyer) and Bicket were joined by theorbist John Lenti. Under the Gothic groin-vaulted ceiling, the acoustics were rich and lustrous, never marred by echo. The result was natural surround-sound. To further enhance the mood, dozens of orange candles (the safe, battery-operated kind) glowed around the floor of the performance area.
Besides journeying through Europe, the program focused on rare and unknown works. The first was by Dario Castello, born around 1600, whose Sonata No. 16 utilized late Renaissance harmony. As is typical with instrumental music of that period, brilliant fast sections were frequently interrupted by passages of adagio chords or other slow mini-movements, one of which was a wandering fantasia. Amid this buffet of rhetorical affect, the flexible, expressive playing by all six musicians was controlled by their sensitive ensemble work.
Johann Philipp Krieger’s Sonata a 4 in F major was more contrapuntal and in a later harmonic style. The performers celebrated the intense and sometimes bizarre Germanic stylus phantasticus with free and exploratory phrasing.
As first violin, Post produced an expressive, sweet sound and a slight rubato without altering the underlying beat. A brief duet between theorbo and cello was a rare timbral treat, and there were tender or dramatic moments between other pairs of players as well in this swirling, exciting piece.
Francesco Durante’s Concerto No. 2 in G minor was the least original of the rarities offered. And while laid out in three movements, it did not have the clear concerto-grosso format of ritornello/tutti vs. soloist(s), although sometimes one or both violinists were featured for long passages.
The first movement, Affettuoso-Presto, was somewhat intriguing for the unusual sliding decorations in the violins and the percussiveness of the theorbo and harpsichord, while the middle movement, Largo affettuoso, was pretty but banal, and the final Allegro ended with such aggression that it took several minutes of tuning for the musicians to recover for the next piece.
The quality of composition rose markedly when the group tackled Georg Muffat’s Passacaglia: Grave in G major from his set of five sonatas called Armonico Tributo, published in 1682. For this work, Novom switched to first violin, leading the ensemble through a beautifully shaped conversation of thick sonorities. Bicket, as always, was the backbone; his alert and reactive playing provided a safe haven for the flashier stuff happening downstage.
Throughout the Muffat, viola and cello used slight delays at each cadence as well as the historical-performance concept of notes inégales (never playing two notes with exactly the same duration) to develop a complex rhythmic structure while always staying perfectly coordinated.
The only well-known item on the program was the conclusion, J.S. Bach’s Suite in A minor for strings and continuo. That is to say, the themes were familiar, being, as the program notes put it, “reconstructed from BWV 1067 by W. Breig” (that’s German musicologist Werner Breig). BWV 1067 is the Suite No. 2 in B minor and includes woodwinds, so this version had strikingly altered instrumentation as well as a key change. More program notes on the provenance of this arrangement would have been helpful.
Despite the familiar material, the sextet’s interpretation brought out unfamiliar aspects in the Bach. The overdotting (extending long notes to such a degree that the short notes following them must be clipped, a common Baroque technique) was so extreme and the harpsichord and theorbo accompaniment so roiling and distressed that the Overture seemed like a different piece. The result of these choices was an emphasis on chords, nicely setting up a contrast for the fugal Rondeau that followed.
The collective intelligence of this band of specialists was at its peak in the Sarabande: The drawing out of sequential dissonances was exquisitely controlled, making each suspension and resolution not only important in its own right but part of a larger harmonic journey.
The famed Badinerie finale — the Polonaise and Minuet of BWV 1067 are not part of this A minor string version — was thrilling, with articulation as sharp as crows’ talons. Probably Bach never had the chance to hear one of his suites played in a crypt, but I hope he was among the spirits listening that night.
This Baroque super-group is welcome to make the Harlem netherworld ring with more musical obscurities whenever they like. Until they return, however, the Crypt Sessions has other programs in store for the spring 2020 months, expected to be announced soon. And in the summer, Death of Classical produces The Angel’s Share, a series in the catacombs under Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
Anne E. Johnson is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn. Her arts journalism has appeared in The New York Times, Classical Voice North America, Chicago On the Aisle, and Copper: The Journal of Music and Audio. For many years she taught music history and theory in the Extension Division of Mannes School of Music.
