Globe Review of Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, with a Little Raging Controversy Thrown In

   
Dietrich Buxtehude

Along with our distinguished colleagues at the Boston Early Music Festival, we were privileged to present the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir at Symphony Hall on Friday evening. The Boston Globe's classical music critic, Jeremy Eichler, reviewed the performance and made note of an attribution issue with the evening's first work, Magnificat primi toni, BuxWV 203, said to be by German (or Danish) composer Dietrich Buxtehude:

"The evening opened with a lovely and meticulous performance of a Magnificat setting by Buxtehude, the composer and organist whose music was an important inspiration to Bach. Though in an odd twist, the erudite program notes by Steven Ledbetter informed audience members that the piece's attribution to Buxtehude was quite dubious, leaving one to wonder why Koopman had chosen this particular work to represent a composer whose music one rarely gets to hear performed at such a high level." Read all of Jeremy Eichler's Boston Globe review.

And here is the segment of Mr. Ledbetter's program notes to which Mr. Eichler refers:

"The work to be performed here is a Magnificat setting discovered in an anonymous manuscript in Uppsala, Sweden, and published by Bruno Grusnick in 1931 as a work by Buxtehude. But Grusnick later discovered that the manuscript had come from a source in central Germany, far from where Buxtehude lived and worked, so that the attribution to him was almost certainly incorrect."

Read all of Steven Ledbetter's program notes for the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir performance.

Being an expert in few, if any things, especially not the music of Dietrich Buxtehude, I have only one thought to offer to this (anything but) raging controversy. Okay, two thoughts:

1) Thanks to Mr. Eichler for reading the program notes and validating our ongoing effort to bring them to our audiences. This may be the most important part of this post. Really, thank you, Jeremy.

2) In the rhetorical spirit, and not to take anything away from Mr. Eichler's point, is it possible Mr. Koopman programmed Buxtehude's Magnificat primi toni not to "represent the composer" but to represent the piece of music and that the attribution simply came along for the ride? Or is it possible Mr. Koopman was making his own case for attribution using the piece as evidence on a program which included J.S. Bach?

Wherever Dietrich Buxtehude is now, his ears must be burning. To quote A.A. Milne, I, being of "little brain," had just gotten past how to pronounce "Buxtehude," and now this. Seriously, though, one part of this concert was free of controversy, it was a lovely performance.