Bach & Soefi

1:20

Nederlands Blazers Ensemble

Ali Ghamsari, Haley Seyfizadeh, Elisabeth Hetherington, David Mackor, Nederlands Blazers Ensemble.

 

7 November 2018, Podium Mozaïek, Amsterdam

DE VOLKSKRANT: A risky venture: combining Bach's work with music from Sufism, the mystical Islamic movement. But it works.

 

What connects Bach to Sufism is soon told. Nothing. Or well, with creative reasoning a dotted line can be drawn: the spiritual. For the Netherlands Wind Ensemble, it was enough for a dare. The programme Bach & Sufi cuts parts from Bach's Hohe Messe with contemporary music rooted in mystical Islamic traditions by Iranian singer Haleh Seyfizadeh and tarspeler Ali Ghamsari. Such a project has a high stumbling hazard. Before you know it, you are listening to a fragment this and a song that. Fortunately, the wind players were gis to involve a professional woman. She is a composer and is called Mathilde Wantenaar (pictured). She put the knife to the Hohe Messe, put her ear to the ground in Persia and arranged a feast of music that generously transcends good intentions. Within Wantenaar's framework, Bach combines wonderfully with melancholic or ecstatic Sufi sound. After arabesques in the throat and on the long-necked lute, it is fine drifting out on a serenely blown Qui tollis peccata mundi (who takes away the sins of the world). A plucked-bass Credo surprisingly creeps out of an oriental swing number. And usually sounding a heavy-handed accompaniment under Et incarnatus est (He who became flesh), Wantenaar turns it into a joyful earworm. Add the tight voice of Canadian soprano Elisabeth Hetherington, and the link between the traditions is complete. In the coming months, the Nederlands Blazersensemble will tour the halls with this programme. We put a bet on it. Bach & Sufi will be a classic.

 

Guido van Oorschot, De Volkskrant, 9 November 2018.

 

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HET PAROOL: No less than sensational. Last year, the Netherlands Wind Ensemble drew full houses with a programme that paired parts of Johann Sebastian Bach' s Hohe Messe with music that can be traced back to the originally Persian tradition of Sufism. We may know the eye-catchers of that Sufism, but what the 'dancing dervishes' are all about (we may take this literally) is more enigmatic. In Bach & Sufi, Catholic worship and the spiritual world of Sufism come together in the form of fifteen pieces in arrangements by the young Dutch composer Mathilde Wantenaar. She also impressed last week at the NTR ZaterdagMatinee with the choral work Dit zijn de bleeke, bleeklichte weken. Bach and the ecstatic music of Iranian tarspeler and composer Ali Ghamsari, go together wonderfully, and that is only possible because they draw from the common source of surrender and humility. This brings together even Bach's flowing lines and the rock-hard glottis beats of Iranian vocalism. The music is played with great empathy by the horns and sung by Haleh Seyfizadeh and Elisabeth Hetherington. As always, Ghamsari's tarsolos are nothing short of sensational.

 

Erik Voermans, Het Parool, 30 March 2019.