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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…]

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…]

BW’s 86th Bach Festival to feature Chatham Baroque & Kenari Saxophones

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by Daniel Hathaway

BW Chorus & OrchThough the composer wasn’t around to blow out the candles on his 333rd birthday cake in March, Johann Sebastian Bach’s music lives on in both traditional and surprising ways. The Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival, whose 86th edition will be celebrated in Berea on April 20 and 21, will touch both the historic and the innovative poles of all things Bach, hosting a period instrument ensemble as well as a saxophone quartet.

“Chatham Baroque sits at the center,” Festival director Dirk Garner said in a telephone conversation. “They’ll be doing their own concert of music by Bach and earlier composers on Friday night, and they’re sharing their expertise by helping prepare the orchestra for Saturday evening’s performance of the St. John Passion.”

This year, the Bach Festival has hired a professional orchestra for the major Bach work. “Chatham’s Andrew Fouts will be the concertmaster, Scott Pauley is playing lute, and Patricia Halvorsen viola da gamba. They’re great musicians and really cool people,” Garner said. [Read more…]

Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival veers off into Brahms in 2017

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by Daniel Hathaway

BW-Bach-Fest-1Among the more persistent bits of misinformation about Johann Sebastian Bach is the notion that the Cantor of Leipzig was completely forgotten soon after his death in 1750, his antiquated musical style disdained by a younger, cooler generation of composers — including his sons. In fact, Bach’s legacy never completely died out. [Read more…]

85th BW Bach Festival takes a
detour to examine
Bach’s influence on Brahms

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by Daniel Hathaway

GarnerWesthuizensWhen you’re in your mid-eighties, it’s good to stimulate your grey matter by taking up something new. This year, the 85th Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival will make a little detour from its normal four-year cycle of performing Johann Sebastian Bach’s B-minor Mass, the two Passions, and the Christmas Oratorio.

On the weekend of April 7-8, the Festival will focus on the theme of how Bach’s music inspired Johannes Brahms, and the featured choral work will be the German Requiem. Pianists Pierre and Sophié van der Westhuizen, who perform as the Westhuizen Duo, will also play a central role in this year’s Festival.

In a conference call with Festival director Dirk Garner and Pierre van der Westhuizen, Garner was quick to assure Bach Festival regulars that this year’s departure from the norm is a special case. [Read more…]

Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival Concert One (April 15)

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by Daniel Hathaway

BW-Motet-Choir-LangFriday evening’s opening concert in Gamble Auditorium showed how swiftly the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival is evolving in this, its 86th year and its second season under new management. Works by Eric Whitacre, David Lang, and Moses Hogan joined a single work by Johann Sebastian Bach on a concert splendidly sung by the BW Motet Choir under festival director Dirk Garner. [Read more…]

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