BACH FANS SPOILED FOR CHOICE WITH AUGUST FESTIVAL
Varied series will explore the context of composer’s work and the remarkable impact it had for centuries
Some enthusiasts think every month of the classical calendar should be a Bach festival. For its part, Early Music Vancouver goes all out for another summer jamboree devoted to the great baroque master.
This year’s festivities start Aug. 1 and culminate in a grand performance of Bach’s St. John Passion, on Aug. 11.
For enthusiasts it’s quite the feast. But isn’t it all just a bit restrictive? Is the music of J. S. Bach (1685-1750) really that significant, that universal? Early Music Vancouver artistic director Matthew White offers answers by celebrating music of the great baroque master while exploring the context of his work, and demonstrating the remarkable impact it had on composers for centuries thereafter.
Two programs are central to understanding the great musical and social forces that made Bach who he was. The male voice Ensemble Cinquecento will sing English vocal masterworks by Thomas Tallis, Christopher Tye, and William Byrd, sophisticated music of the late Renaissance that demonstrates a high point in a tradition that was soon to be superseded by the new, flashy baroque idiom we associate with Bach.
Vespers: Songs for Troubled Times commemorates the 400th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation and sets up the central commitment of Bach’s life and work: his labour as an unbelievably productive creator of music for the Lutheran Church.
Audiences can sample a diverse selection of music by Bach’s contemporaries in Germany, Italy, and even the New World. Handel in Italy: Virtuosic Cantatas, for example, offers an all-star quintet of soprano Jenny Högström, counter-tenor Terry Wey, harpsichordist Alexander Weimann, cellist Beiliang Zhu, and lutist Lucas Harris, centred on several works written by George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) during his youthful residence in Italy.
Also on the docket are compositions by four bona fide Italians, which demonstrate the astonishing level of craft and inspiration taken as almost a matter of course in the music-intoxicated Italian states at the end of the 17th century.
Bach’s extraordinary influence on future generations is also a major part of the festival narrative this season. After his death in 1750, Bach’s work fell from favour, to be revived only in the early 19th century.
An afternoon concert called Conversions: Mendelssohn, Moscheles and Bach, with forte pianist Byron Schenkam and cellist Michael Unterman, will explore work by the Mendelssohns (Felix, the greatest of all Bach revivalists, and his formidable sister Fanny), and keyboard music by the now-eclipsed Ignaz Moscheles.
In another matinee, pianist Erika Switzer and baritone Tyler Duncan will perform lieder by two of Bach’s most sincere 19th-century acolytes: Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms.
No event demonstrates the continuing resonance of Bach better than the festival’s opening concert on Aug. 1, featuring cellist Matt Haimovitz.
Last fall, contemporary American composer Frederic Rzewski told a group of Vancouver students, “Not all composers believe in God; but all composers believe in Bach.”
As if to prove the point, Haimovitz has elicited Bach tropes from Philip Glass, David Sanford, Du Yun, and Vijay Iyer to preface Bach’s suites for solo cello.
Hearing how four of today’s most interesting and celebrated composers relate to Bach’s music promises to be enlightening and even provocative, two qualities associated with Haimovitz and his penchant for breaking through traditional concert bounds.
His festival-opening concert will be offered in two sets, 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., with a civilized mid-program dinner break.
For the complete Vancouver Bach Festival schedule, including free music-related film screenings, visit earlymusic.bc.ca/tickets/summer-festival.