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…]
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.
Case Western Reserve University’s string orchestra — the Case Camerata Chamber Orchestra led by conductor David Ellis — currently fields 25 student musicians mostly majoring in the sciences (two of whom are also music minors). For their Friday, April 5 concert at Harkness Chapel, Ellis invited five collaborators from his own professional group Earth and Air: String Orchestra to coach each section and sit principal for the performance. The results were noticeable: the group played with an admirable cohesion and rhythmic precision.