Rokus de Groot comments on the program:

Bach’s music can be heard as a great connoisseur of life. This sarabande can thus be heard as an expression of compassion and offering comfort: “I know what you are going through”.

The baroque is the time of the dance. That gives the music something light, even when dramatic subjects are addressed. Bach’s Matthew Passion, for example, features numerous dances: suffering is danced, making it bearable.

Bach’s sarabandes are often rich in harmony and ornamentation, but this one is exceptional in its bareness. It fits well as an instrumental response to Sundarikatha’s closing song.

Sundari was the most beautiful woman of her time. Nanda, a half-brother of the Buddha, was her lover. He left her for the path of enlightenment. Van der Velde has given her a voice in her desolation. In the first of the songs Sundari is compared to a beautiful city, in the second she complains that the streets and squares of that city are empty. She doesn’t understand why that is necessary when it comes to enlightenment.

This is a complaint from an Iranian woman from the depths of misery, locked in her abode, addressed to the moon. Even this one hides from her. The second song is a playful reproach from the woman to her lost comb, which she accuses of being unfaithful.

Programme:

Rokus de Groot – Sundarikatha-songs (text: Paul van der Velde, Sanskriet).

Bach, Sarabande from cello-solo suite nr 5 in c.

Rokus de Groot, from Mirror of Dew, “O moon!” And ‘Complaint against the comb” (text: Alam-Tâj Zhâle Qâ’em-Maqâmi, translation from Farsi to English: Asghar Seyed-Gohrab).

Bach, Sarabande from cello-solo suite nr. 1 in G.