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BW Bach Fest 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…]

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…]

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…]

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