Bach & Sons – Bridge Theatre, London

A review of Nina Raine’s new play Bach & Sons, on at the Bridge Theatre and starring Simon Russell Beale. I learned a lot, despite wondering what the ‘point’ of the play was at times.

A Learned Play About A Learned Man

Long-time readers know that I don’t know a whole lot about classical music (although that doesn’t stop me going to it and telling you about it). So I was always going to learn a lot in a play about Johann Sebastian Bach. In the event, it was a rather learned play on the subject. Bach & Sons is a new play by Nina Raine. The subject is of course Johann Sebastian Bach, famous German composer of 1685-1750. More specifically, as the title suggests, it is about Bach in the context of his family relationships or relationship with his sons.

Family is a topic that was famously important to Bach. He came from a long line of musicians, and carefully preserved their musical outputs alongside his own as a legacy to be passed down through the family. Some of his sons followed in his musical footsteps (hardly optional as musical education was key to their childhoods), and in fact it is to them we owe the survival of Bach’s music. He wasn’t particularly famous in his own time – as well as composer he was a musician, choir director and teacher. His sons, particularly the eldest two (Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Phillip Emanuel), played and promoted their father’s music (sometimes also reattributed it to themselves but hey, why not?). This laid the groundwork for the likes of Mozart and Haydn to ‘rediscover’ Bach in later years.

So this is the background to Bach & Sons: a family man, intensely intellectual composer, sometimes difficult to get along with, but interested above all else in preserving and adding to the Bach family musical repertoire, and doing so in the service of God.

Bach & Sons

As plays go, I found Bach & Sons a little curious. I learned a lot about music, particularly counterpoint. I also learned a lot of biographical information about Bach (see above). But at times, particularly during the first half, I found myself wondering what it was about as a play. Bach & Sons operates as a series of vignettes of family life. Bach teaching his sons music; his first wife’s illness and death; friction caused by his second marriage; his second wife lamenting the deaths of so many of their children… By the interval, I was wondering whether there was going to be a focal point or if things would somehow come to a head. The second half introduced more father/son relationships (eg. Frederick the Great’s traumatic youth); for me this brought out more nuance in the theme of family relationships.

What I realised eventually was that it acts almost like an analogy for counterpoint as repeatedly explained during the play. Counterpoint is music with two or more lines (voices) which are independent yet interdependent. Bach often describes the need for the voices to venture off before coming back together harmoniously to ensure a satisfying musical conclusion. In a similar way, various ideas repeat during the vignettes – Carl’s desperation to please his father; Willi’s difficulty realising his potential; the difficulty of being a woman in love with JS Bach – playing out in different ways before coming back together in a holistic conclusion. It is a satisfying ending even if not a play that I would rush back to see multiple times.

Final Thoughts

Overall despite my interval ponderings I liked Bach & Sons. It’s a great vehicle for Simon Russell Beale. His Bach is curmudgeonly, very funny, and obsessive. A standout performance for me was Pravessh Rana as Prince Frederick. His confidence and charm completely belie the fact that this is his professional stage debut – one to watch. The female characters have much less to work with (at one time I wondered to myself whether the play passed the Bechdel test) but that is often the way in investigations of whether you can separate the wonderful art from the less wonderful man…

So Bach & Sons is a good if scholarly evening out. I did find myself missing the robust Covid protections of earlier things I’ve seen at The Bridge, but at the same time it’s nice to see slightly bigger productions coming back.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 3.5/5

Bach & Sons on until 11 September 2021

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