Water music

by David Stabler
From The Oregonian

On Friday, July 5, Eugene's Silva Concert Hall will take on an otherworldly look and sound for the U.S. premiere of Tan Dun's "Water Passion After St. Matthew."

Seventeen clear plastic water bowls, 18 inches across and lit from below, will sit on waist-high pedestals, arranged on the stage in the shape of a Christian cross. Two percussionists will move among the bowls, dipping stones and gongs into the water. Microphones will amplify the watery sounds, while choir members tap stones together and chant, yell and murmur to an accompaniment of Tuvan throat singing.

Yes, it's the 33rd annual Oregon Bach Festival, a two-week, morning-till-night musical feast that takes the music of Johann Sebastian Bach as its inspiration and starting point but expands in ways the inventive Baroque composer would surely have marveled at. Bach, after all, used any and all means of musical resources at hand.

Tan, who won an Oscar for his score to "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," will lead his "Water Passion" in person. The music includes a choir, two vocal soloists, and instruments such as a lap-held fiddle and the whisper-voiced xun, an ancient Chinese flute. Choir members were asked to bring stones from locations they considered meaningful: a riverbank, the beach, a mountain trail.

"Water Passion" promises to be a highlight of the two-week Oregon Bach Festival, which opens Friday and runs through July 14 at Eugene's Hult Center for the Performing Arts and the University of Oregon. Daily rehearsals, lectures, classes and concerts provide insights into the music for audiences eager to hear world-class performers.

In a roundabout way, Tan's music connects with Bach, who remains the festival's mainstay (his magnificent B Minor Mass opens the festival Friday, for example). Tan wrote "Water Passion" at the request of Helmuth Rilling, the festival's artistic director, for the 250th anniversary of Bach's death in 2000. The work premiered in Stuttgart, Germany, that year. Bach wrote several Passions commemorating the life of Christ, and Tan's music continues that tradition with references to water and sand in St. Matthew's Gospel.

"So many cultures use water as an essential metaphor," Tan has said. "There is the symbolism of baptism, it is associated with birth, creation and re-creation. If you think of the water cycle, where it comes down to earth and returns to the atmosphere, only to return -- that is a symbol of resurrection."

The single performance of "Water Passion" begins at 8 p.m. Friday, July 5. Tan will talk about the music in a lecture-demonstration beginning at 5 p.m. Thursday.

On Sunday, July 7, Tan will make his second festival appearance, conducting a suite of music from "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," performed to a specially created video by Ang Lee, the film's director.

Other festival highlights include vocal recitals by Thomas Quasthoff, the superbly expressive German baritone, and his equally superb accompanist, Justus Zeyen on July 6, repeating July 13 (both sold out). He will sing Franz Schubert's "Schwanengesang" ("Swan Song") together with art songs by Richard Strauss and Hugo Wolf.

On July 8, the American pianist Jeffrey Kahane will perform Bach's "Goldberg Variations," a sold-out event. Two years ago, Kahane gave a memorably rhythmic performance of the piece, a theme and 33 knotty variations. The festival concludes July 14 with a reprise of Krzysztof Penderecki's bold and thrilling "Credo," a 50-minute work for 200 musicians. The festival won a Grammy award for its recording of the piece following its world premiere in Eugene in 1998.

And don't overlook "The Music of Hope" on Monday, a concert of new choral music from around the world performed by the Oregon Repertory Singers. The concert is the idea of Robert Kyr, a University of Oregon composer who set up a international jury to select music from among 700 entries. The winning works, Kyr says, will be stunning.

For a complete festival schedule, go to www.oregonbachfestival.com or call 800-457-1486.