Ian Watson revels in the possibilities of the Early Music Festival

Jun. 14—Given these grim times, the arts are perhaps more restorative and affirming than ever. Ian Watson, creative director of the New London-based Connecticut Early Music Festival, was indeed delighted by the broad swath of aesthetic options in organizing a post-pandemic live festival dedicated to music of the Renaissance, classical and even Baroque eras.

This explains why this year's Connecticut Early Music Festival, which got underway last weekend and concludes with concerts and workshops Friday, Saturday and Sunday, offered such a clever mix of programs — some perhaps predictable in their popularity and others dazzling in their creative focus on lesser-known aspects.

"Yes, it would be possible to have a successful early music festival if you set out to feature more obscure composers and compositions," Watson says by phone last week. He's pondering a question as to whether it would be fun to do such a thing. "But there's always the balance sheet. You have to get people in the door. Before I took over in 2016, it was traditional, I think, that each (Early Music) festival had a theme.

"But I had a few things to think about. The pandemic shut down our live events for the past two years. I'd booked a number of artists in 2020 and I sort of felt obligated to get them here as soon as possible, and they of course have their specializations," Watson says. "Also, this is the 40th anniversary of Early Music, and I wanted to do something that would commemorate that in a special way."

So many possibilities

The festival started last week — almost 40 years to the day, in fact — with the exact same all-Bach program that kicked off the first-ever Connecticut Early Music concert. And, given that the two most highly regarded Early Music composers are Bach and Mozart, Watson decided to close the festival with Sunday's All-Mozart program, which features the Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, K. 550 and Requiem in D Minor, K. 626.

With those justifiably familiar concerts bookending the weekends, Watson decided to avoid any further thematic programming and just put together "some individual concerts and events that people at any given time might like to go to. So we have the perennial winners and, at the same time, I've tried to present some very unusual pieces."

On Friday, for example, in The Red Barn at Mitchell College in New London, attendees will enjoy a Schubertiade — which is term that had to be invented to describe the distinctive circumstances of Franz Schubert's lack of success during his lifetime.

Watson: "Schubert was a school master. He rarely performed in public and had very little of his music published while he was alive. He didn't have wealthy patrons to support his work. So, he and his friends would get together in his parlor and he'd play his compositions in a very relaxed atmosphere. Can you imagine hearing that? I think, by approaching it this way, it shows these artists as real people."

A Schubertiade, then, musically imagines and replicates one of those intimate parlor experiences. One wouldn't have a Beethoventiade, for example, because Beethoven was, in his time, the equivalent of a rock star.

For Friday's Schubertiade, Watson, an immensely gifted keyboardist who was offered a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music at 14 and has conducted and/or been a soloist with an atlas full of national orchestras, will play fortepiano alongside baritone David McFerrin, violinist Amy Rawstron and violaist Jason Fisher. The program features Schubert's Sonatina in D for violin and fortepiano, his Arpeggione sonata, selected Moments Musicaux for fortepiano, and Beethoven's song cycle An Die Ferne Geliebte.

Watson also happily describes a recorder workshop that takes place Saturday morning in Niantic's St. John's Episcopal Church. "Like most people, I used to think all recorders are about a foot long," Watson says. "I was amazed to find out some of them are five-to-six feet long. Or they might be the size of a pennywhistle. And we've got some true virtuosos coming in. That should be fun, and children are welcome, too."

Thanks, Oliver Cromwell

And another example of the less familiar offering happened last week when the festival brought a Restoration Era production of Sir William Davenant's adaptation of Shakespeare's "Macbeth" into the George Kent Performance Hall in Westerly. Boston's Henry Purcell Society took the stage with incidental music by Purcell, Matthew Locke and John Eccles.

The version evolved when, not long after Shakespeare's death, the Puritan Oliver Cromwell ascended to power in England and shut down all artistic expression. Only after Cromwell passed 11 restrictive years later did the Restoration era begin and things returned to normal.

"You'll likely never see (a production like this) again," Watson says. "It's hard to believe how harsh those years of Puritan rule must have been with no music or theater. Fortunately, there was a major resurgence of the arts, and this version of "Macbeth," with special music and an abridged text, is remarkable. It's not standard fare, maybe, but it fits with what we're trying to do and some of the ideas we're trying to explore."

The first Early Music weekend was rounded out with more well-known fare. Master harpsichordist Peter Sykes nuanced J.S. Bach's The Goldberg Variations and, given the heady degree of difficulty in such an assignment, Watson is asked if his biggest worry is finding someone to play it.

"Well, it (wasn't) me!" he laughs. "It's a great idea, but I'll let someone else do the work. And I was luckiest to get one of the greatest alive in Peter Sykes."

In an email Monday, Watson verified that all three of the first weekend's events went very well. He writes, "We had a large and enthusiastic audience on Friday for the concert of Bach — and there was a handful of people a handful of people in attendance who were at the first performance 40 years ago!

"The Goldberg Variations were a perfect, thoughtful complement to the virtuoso music of the first concert (and) 'Macbeth' and a unique, powerful synthesis of actors, dancers and musicians were greeted with a standing, cheering ovation!"

Civilized existence

Watson, who in his career has performed many contemporary works and appeared on soundtrack recordings for such films as "Amadeus," "Death and the Maiden" and "Cry the Beloved Country," says that, during the last few years, which by almost any standard have been dark, he wasn't tempted to immerse himself in Early Music as a sort of "living in the past" form of therapy — as tempting as such things might be to some.

"Look, arts are essential to a civilized existence and our intellectual well-being," he says. "Why do we still listen to music we love? Because of what it does for us. But that could be Bach or Hendrix. One of the things I love about the idea of an early music festival is how we approach that music from a historical perspective. It's not a question of escape or nostalgia."

Watson is talking about the emphasis by festival musicians on playing period instruments. Over the years, improvements to making instruments means they're are more precise and reliable. But, Watson says, "in the course of doing that, something was lost. Not just the changes in the technical capacities of the instrument, but better instruments in general mean you're not playing the instruments the composer wrote the music for. It changes the character."

He pauses, then says, "By using replica or original instruments, you can attempt to go back and relive that white-hot moment of creation. And once you've experienced that a listener or a musician, you don't enjoy those pieces done by a modern orchestra the same way. The work is informed by the instrument, so to listen in that way isn't so much nostalgia as it is an attempt to find a way to go into the music."