Review: Bach at St. Paul’s, and the Fictional Relative, P.D.Q., at Town Hall

For New York music lovers of a certain age, and undoubtedly many younger ones as well, Peter Schickele’s concert “P.D.Q. Bach: The Golden Anniversary” at Town Hall on Monday evening was cause for giddy celebration. And for a listener who had already heard two programs of legitimate Bachiana on Monday, it all but made the head spin.

The (real) Bach portion of the day began in the afternoon, at St. Paul’s Chapel on lower Broadway, with one of Trinity Wall Street’s Bach at One concerts, part of Trinity’s Twelfth Night Festival. Then it was back to St. Paul’s at 5 for another Twelfth Night program, the Helicon Foundation’s “Inspiring Bach.”

That concert was originally billed as “Bach Family,” but Helicon may have thought better about focusing too much attention on the rest of the lineage, given the dubious activities uptown starring P.D.Q., whom Mr. Schickele (P.D.Q.’s mischievous creator, need it be said?) has described as “the most embarrassing skeleton in the Bach family closet.” In the event, Helicon performed two works by a single Bach — Johann Sebastian’s illustrious cousin Johann Christoph (not to be confused with Johann Sebastian’s sons Johann Christian, commonly known as J. C. Bach, and Johann Christoph Friedrich) — along with music by other composers known to Bach: Johann Rosenmüller, Dietrich Buxtehude, Philipp Heinrich Erlebach and Johann Caspar Kerll.

Whatever influence those figures may have had on Bach (huge, at least in Buxtehude’s case), the inspirational qualities of these particular pieces seemed limited. Except, that is, for Johann Christoph’s “Meine Freundin, du Bist Schön,” a delightful wedding cantata set to texts from the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes, wholly engrossing in its sensuous depictions of love and lust (both romantic and culinary).

The work’s centerpiece is an extended chaconne featuring a soprano and violinist, here beautifully and meltingly sung by Molly Quinn and brilliantly played by Robert Mealy. The other fine singers, each also heard in solo declamations, were Ryland Angel, countertenor; James Taylor, tenor; and Tyler Duncan, baritone. Avi Stein, Helicon’s artistic director, led from the harpsichord.

Mr. Stein, as associate organist and chorus master of Trinity Wall Street, also directed the Bach at One concert, this time from the positive organ. The Helicon instrumentalists anchored the performances, as part of the Trinity Baroque Orchestra, and the excellent vocal soloists — Sarah Brailey, soprano; Timothy Parsons, countertenor; Brian Giebler, tenor; and Dashon Burton, bass — were drawn from the Choir of Trinity Wall Street.

The popular Bach at One series, conceived by Julian Wachner, the church’s director of music and the arts, is this season completing a five-year survey of Bach’s sacred cantatas, and this program, as usual, presented two of them: No. 133, “Ich Freue Mich in Dir,” and No. 7, “Christ, Unser Herr, zum Jordan Kam.” The soloists sang the choruses, one voice to a part, and Mr. Stein offered as prologue Bach’s Toccata in C (BWV 564) on the chapel’s splendid Schlicker organ, phrasing with admirable freedom.

That leaves the P.D.Q. Bach event, which can be put off no longer. Mr. Schickele conceived his hapless alter ego in 1954, and in 1965 he began a run of annual P.D.Q. Bach concerts in New York, which ended 10 years ago for reasons of Mr. Schickele’s health. But on Monday, the show was back in all — well, some of — its glory.

Again for health reasons, Mr. Schickele, who turned 80 in July, had to curtail much of the act’s physical humor, including a trademark Tarzan-like entrance via rope. Mr. Schickele walks these days with need of a cane, and he performed the entire show from a wheelchair.

Yet indomitable in spirit, he gave his all, performing on the soprano proctophone (a P.D.Q. invention complete with billowing surgical glove) in the “Hairpiece” from P.D.Q.’s “The Civilian Barber” and on a keyboard harmonica in P.D.Q.’s oratorio “Oedipus Tex,” where he also bayed energetically through the title role. And the exertions of those around him — Michèle Eaton, “off-coloratura soprano”; Brian Dougherty, “tenor profundo”; William Walters, stage manager; Jorge Mester, conductor; and members of the New York Pick-Up Ensemble — made up for Mr. Schickele’s relative stasis.

It must be accounted a good P.D.Q. Bach evening that subjects listeners to only two of this incompetent pseudo-composer’s works. There was also serious music, slightly adulterated: the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in the familiar sportscast version, with Mr. Schickele as play-by-play announcer; the radio personality Elliott Forrest as color commentator; and Mr. Walters as referee. And there were two works for which Mr. Schickele himself took the blame: “Swing Sweet, Low Chariot,” an arrangement of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” that includes a complete performance of “Danny Boy” (don’t ask); and “Uptown Hoedown,” one of Mr. Schickele’s patented mash-ups of classical and popular tunes.

Mr. Schickele works on many levels of humor beyond the physical, from groan- or hiss-inducing puns to highly sophisticated musical jokes, and it was all hilarious, as expected. But as feared, there was also a tinge of melancholy in seeing this ebullient personality in a wheelchair and working at reduced capacity.

No matter, it was a banner day for the Bachs, the glorious masters and the inglorious fake.