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BW Bach Festival celebrates their namesake composer with “Suites and Motets” combination (Apr. 11)

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by Stephanie Manning

It’s early days, but the 2025 music festival season is starting to kick into gear. A harbinger of that trend here in Northeast Ohio is the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival, which just celebrated its 94th year.

The second and final day of the event swapped J.S. Bach for George Frideric Handel, presenting the composer’s Messiah for the first time in festival history. But the previous evening’s presentation tread more familiar ground. On April 11, Dirk Garner led BWV: Cleveland’s Bach Choir in a spirited concert of Bach suites and motets. [Read more…]

BW Bach Festival: Featuring JSB’s Music from 1724 (Apr. 13)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Coming between a performance by the Baroque string band ACRONYM on Friday evening and the St. John Passion on Sunday afternoon, the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival concert on Saturday evening, April 13 featured a selection of works that the composer wrote in 1724, his second year as Cantor in Leipzig.

That was the year he completed and premiered the first version of the St. John Passion, and launched the ambitious and ultimately uncompleted long-term project of composing a five-year cycle of cantatas for nearly every Sunday and major festival in the church year..

For this occasion, festival director Dirk Garner drew on BWV: Cleveland’s Bach Choir, a small but mighty ensemble of fifteen voices. [Read more…]

After two years online, the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival goes live again from April 8-10

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by Daniel Hathaway

Nine decades ago when it was still a college, the grand plan for Baldwin Wallace University’s annual Bach Festival was based on a repeating cycle of four of the Leipzig cantor’s major vocal works, giving students the opportunity to sing and play the two Passions, the B-minor Mass, and the Christmas Oratorio during their undergraduate days in Berea.

Back on track after a two-year online exile, the 2022 Festival, enhanced by a $100,000 gift from the Kulas Foundation, will comprise 15 in-person events, including a performance of four of the six cantatas that make up Bach’s Christmas Oratorio.

The weekend will also continue the 50th anniversary celebration of the founding of BW’s Riemenschneider Bach Institute, named for scholar and festival founder Albert Riemenschneider, a party that was interrupted by the pandemic in 2020.

Part of the Kulas funding will support the appearances of two period ensembles now based in Boston that were formed largely by students who met at Oberlin and at the Juilliard School. [Read more…]

BW Bach Festival: “Jesu, meine Freude” (Apr. 13)

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by David Kulma

The Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival’s April 13 concert in Gamble Auditorium featured the BW Motet Choir under Dirk Garner in motets and cantatas from across Bach’s life. The first half paired what might be Bach’s earliest motet with his longest. The short motet Ich lasse dich nicht, du segnest mich denn, BWV Anh. 159 for choir and organ was long thought to be by an older relative, Johann Christoph Bach. Now accepted to be by the most famous Bach, this work takes its text from Genesis: “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” [Read more…]

BW Bach Festival: Suites & Motets (Apr. 12)

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by Timothy Robson

The Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival concert on the afternoon of April 12 carried the title “Suites and Motets.” Fynette Kulas Music Hall, a former church worship space repurposed as a concert venue, was set up with the audience surrounding the orchestra and choir on three sides. Cellist René Schiffer, who performed three movements from Bach’s unaccompanied cello suites as “ear cleansers” between the motets, sat on what is normally the room’s stage platform. [Read more…]

BW Bach Festival: duo pianists Anderson and Roe (Apr. 13)

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by Timothy Robson

The duo piano team of Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe combined virtuosity and entertainment at their afternoon concert on April 13 in Baldwin Wallace’s Gamble Auditorium, as part of the 2019 BW Bach Festival. Johann Sebastian Bach’s works were filtered through the lens of composers as diverse as Heitor Villa-Lobos and György Kurtág, and through the duo’s own arrangements.

[Read more…]

Director Dirk Garner fills us in on Baldwin Wallace’s 87th Bach Festival

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by Daniel Hathaway

Founded in 1932 by Albert Riemenschneider (probably best known today for his edition of Bach’s 371 harmonized chorales), the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival turns a spry 87 years old this year. Festival director Dirk Garner continues to infuse the extended Festival weekend with new ideas. We chatted with him by phone to ask what’s new on the agenda for 2019.

“There are two or three changes this year. We’ve added a Thursday evening concert specifically to celebrate our new orchestra conductor, Soo Han. He’s just been here a year, but he’s making a big splash. He’s a wonderful musician, and the students love him.” That opening concert on Thursday, April 11 at 7:00 pm in Gamble Auditorium includes Leopold Stokowski’s arrangement of Bach’s Air on the G String from the third orchestral suite, Mozart’s Symphony No. 31 in D, and Christopher Theofanidis’ Rainbow Body.

“The Stokowski arrangement ties into what I think is so cool about this year’s Festival,” Garner said. “It shows the many faces of Bach in the 21st century. [Read more…]

BW Bach Festival Concert 4: St. John Passion (April 20)

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by Timothy Robson

BW Chorus & OrchFor their Saturday evening concert on April 20, the Baldwin Wallace University Bach Festival presented Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. John Passion in Gamble Auditorium on the BW campus. Festival Director Dirk Garner conducted the Motet Choir and a professional orchestra that included members of Chatham Baroque, who had performed earlier in the Festival. [Read more…]

Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival: Concert 1: Bach and Friends (Apr. 20)

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by Timothy Robson

Duncan-TylerThis past weekend Baldwin Wallace University hosted its 86th annual Bach Festival with three days of concerts, lectures, and other events. Friday evening’s performance,  “Bach and Friends,” was held in Gamble Auditorium on the BW campus. Guest soloists Tyler Duncan, baritone (left), and Dana Sundet, oboe, joined the Baldwin Wallace Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Tiffany Chang. [Read more…]

Chatham Baroque & Kenari Quartet: two afternoons at BW Bach Festival (Apr. 20-21)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The more predictable big performances at the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival each year take place on Friday and Saturday evenings, but the afternoons of those days offer more varied fare. For the 86th Festival, the organizers invited the Pittsburgh early music trio Chatham Baroque on Friday, and the Kenari Saxophone Quartet on Saturday, for programs that considered the legacy of J.S. Bach from two widely different points of view. [Read more…]

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