Bach & Sons review – Nina Raine brings Bach back to life
What’s in an ampersand? Turns out to be plenty. The “&” transforms the Bach family from simple squabblers into a thriving musical business; a core plot element playwright Nina Raine spotlights in her latest work, Bach & Sons, currently showing at the wonderful Bridge Theatre, hunched in the shadow of Tower Bridge.
Sans this theme, the play would just be about a grumpy, dysfunctional 18th-century wannabee musical family living in Weimar, Köthen, and Leipzig. The work might have been sufficient as a biopic everyday story of court musician folk, vying to see whether a genius father or one of his two musically proficient sons, was headed to win Weimar’s I’ve Got Talent, 1715. It would, however, have been slight.
Instead, the play is an entertaining heavyweight. It is as much about the court music industry as the Bach family’s WhatsApp chatter and how the character of music was moulded by the social structures of the time and why professionals like Johann Sebastian Bach were forced to conform with convention by the church and aristo sponsors, and how they rebelled. Or, tried to; financial survival always came first. The playwright encompasses a grand sweep of 18th-century musical history in the persona of the Bach family.
Nina Raine was born one year after the final episode of Steptoe & Son, the BBC hit comedy series, featuring Albert and his son, Harold – London east end rag and bone men. She will probably find the following comparison demeaning. Sorry. I think Steptoe is one of the most perceptive social comedies of the TV era – and Raine’s Bach has much in common.
Stay with me. For Oildrum Lane, read Weimar; for the totting trade read musical composition; for impossible, grizzling Albert read Simon Russell Beale’s tetchy Pa Bach; for absurd, aspiring intellectual, Harold, read the Bach boys, cash-conscious Carl Phillip Emmanuel juxtaposed against the highbrow – but less commercially successful drunk – Wilhelm Friedmann.
So far, so comparable, but the strongest common thread that binds the works is the device of delivering serious social commentary in a thick coating of first-order comedy. The result? Audience attention never flags. A sharp observation on strained family relations or court musical practice is softened by machine-gun delivery of wisecracks. During one diatribe against professional religious musical mediocrity, Bach dismisses an unsatisfactory church choir as “multitalentless”.
Raine is at great pains to illustrate her play with the soundtrack of the composer. Even for those unfamiliar with the works of J S Bach, this is a favourite hits tour de force. A broad selection of orchestral, choral, solo voice and instrumental pieces are delivered by an excellent sound system coupled with well-matched playing on various instruments by the actors. Even the faux violin is in time, an almost perfect illusion. No mean feat.
There are twelve musical passages in Act I and eight in Act II. The dialogue always carefully explains what is going on in each of the musician’s minds. Even a musically tin-eared audience will leave Bach & Sons with a clear understanding of the musical trends and techniques of the age; particularly counterpoint and fugue, the foundations of Bach’s musical tradition. These are the artforms of which he was the undisputed master.
What have others said? The play has been mostly praised. One critic incomprehensibly complained the work focused too much on music. Pah! That will be the same critic who complained that the classic 1961 Western, The Comancheros, turned out, to his surprise, to be about American Indians. Ridiculous. A play about J S Bach without music would be like a Clint Eastwood movie without chewing gum.
Of course, all the dialogue delivered by Simon Russell Beale, at the top of his considerable form, is fiction. Bach left no YouTube legacy. But it is fiction founded on well-educated guesswork. Bach senior, although mostly following convention is depicted as no submissive slave. He is always kicking against the traces, building foundations for the next century, Mozart, Beethoven et al. He is driven by his music. Criticised by son Carl for too much unusual modulation across keys he retorts, “but each key opens a new musical room for me”. Music reaches into J S Bach’s soul. It soon becomes clear that it has become his religion. Martin Luther lost the battle with Bach.
Every description of the complex structure of counterpoint and fugue is accompanied by easily understood illustrations at a harpsichord. In Act II, when J S Bach finally meets Frederick the Great, who has engaged upwardly mobile son Carl at his court, at their only, carefully engineered encounter in Berlin, Raine devises a competition set by Frederick for Bach père. He is to compose, impromptu, a piece based on a complex passage devised by the king, weaving it into a six-voice contrapuntal melody. Bach nearly passes the impossible test.
What comes across is the true relationship between monarch, any monarch, even a musically talented one like Frederick, and court composers to be found aplenty across Europe. J S Bach may be great, but he is no exception. Authority is always condescending. Sometimes gratuitously insulting. Even Bach, who has made the long and arduous journey to Frederick’s court for what turns out to be a token encounter, is treated like a performing monkey. Talent reduced to a bag of showy tricks.
When J S Bach meets Frederick, he is greeted as “old Bach”. This is either a clever insult fabricated by Raine or a mistake. For “old Bach” was Johann Sebastian’s father, Johann Ambrosius Bach. If not a mistake? It might just be the sort of smirking put down greeting her evocation of the oleaginous monarch – excellently portrayed by Pravessh Rana in a wonderful plush blue velvet coat – would have contrived. Simon Russell Beale’s wig almost fell off at the insult.
A friend who saw an earlier performance described the action as slow. Can’t agree. Must have been an off night. I thought all the actors were committed and convincing. Pandora Colin as Maria Barbara, Bach’s first wife; Racheal Ofori, Anna Magdalena, his second; Samuel Blenkin, Carl Philipp Emanuel; and Douggie McMeeken, Wilhelm Friedmann. A great cast, none of whom stood in Russel Beale’s shadow.
In the horseshoe configuration of Bridge Theatre, the scene was set under a starry panoply of harpsichords, and stage changes accomplished seamlessly by the unobtrusive wheeling in and out of silently manoeuvred sets. Stage designer, Vicki Mortimer, also responsible for the Royal Opera House’s Lessons in Love and Violence, reviewed last week, kept the action bowling along in sparse elegance.
The all-too-common tragedy of the time, infant mortality, stalks the performance. Bach had seven children by Maria Barbara and thirteen by Anna Magdalena. Four died in childhood, two died at birth. There is a poignant moment when Anna frets beside the harpsichord, tattooing a rat-tat-tat lament for the dead infants on the casing with her finger. In this era family funerals were routine. She is part of the family business, co-operating with the composition of the famous notebook titled in her honour.
Bach faded into obscurity after his death. Without the ceaseless work of Felix Mendelssohn in the 19th century, he would be largely unknown today. Mendelssohn recovered the composer’s 200 plus works and singlehandedly resurrected the reputation of the father of classical music.
Around 150 years later Nina Raine has, through this cerebral and engaging artwork, shed further light on the character of the great man, the musical business of his extended family, the social driving forces of the Bach era and the development of a musical style, destined to become the great classical tradition. Anyone with even a slight interest in musical history is much in her debt. Catch Bach & Sons while you can – until 11 September.
Books tickets to see Bach & Sons at the Bridge Theatre here.