The leading characters in Oliver Cotton’s The Score, are a great musician and a great militarist in the Age of Enlightenment. The play is directed by Trevor Nunn. The set and costumes are by Robert Jones.
Johann Sebastian Bach reluctantly travels from Leipzig to the court of King Frederick II of Prussia in Potsdam in 1747. The meeting is fraught with danger.
The two men are opposites: Bach is deeply religious and hates war, whilst Frederick the Great is an atheist and warmonger. What they have in common is a love of music. Frederick is an accomplished flute player.
Frederick challenges Bach to improvise a six-voice fugue on a long and complex theme, which he, Frederick, had written. It was a fiendishly difficult task, even for such a skilful improvisor as Bach.
Unbeknown to Bach, his son Carl bets the king and his sycophantic music courtiers that Bach could do it. A huge amount of money was at stake. The direct result of the challenge was Bach’s famous anthology, The Musical Offering.
The play is also about war. Frederick was determined to make Prussia a power in Europe and invaded Silesia. Bach accused the Prussian troops of rape and pillage, which Frederick did not deny but argued atrocities were inevitable in war.
Brian Cox commands the stage as Bach. The scenes which work best are those he shares with Jamie Wilkes and Stephen Hagan.
Cox, forthright, unafraid, has the necessary gravitas. Wilkes plays his son, Carl, a highly successful musician in his own right. His tender affection for his father is palpable. Hagan plays Frederick who had a traumatic childhood. He was gay and his father killed his lover.
Voltaire makes a brief comic appearance and is played by Peter De Jersey as a fop in a Restoration Comedy.
Oliver Cotton’s play has potential but needs editing. There is too much padding and an unnecessary coda after the drama’s proper climax.
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