2023-24 season: ‘Little Match Girl,’ Paul McCartney
The upcoming season by the Bach Festival Society of Winter Park will feature a composition by Paul McCartney, a silent movie given voice through music, a Norwegian trumpeter and her all-female brass ensemble, renowned pianist Alon Goldstein and an oratorio that tells slaves’ stories from the Underground Railroad.
The 89th annual festival, next February, will feature the first symphonic work by an African American woman to be played by a major orchestra and “The Little Match Girl Passion,” David Lang’s Pulitzer Prize-winning work inspired by Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and based on Hans Christian Andersen’s beloved story.
Season subscriptions will be available for new patrons beginning May 1, with tickets to individual events going on sale Aug. 1 at bachfestivalflorida.org.
In a phone conversation, Bach Festival Society artistic director John Sinclair walked me through the season chronologically, beginning with “The Music of the Enlightenment” at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 3 in Tiedtke Concert Hall at Rollins College in Winter Park. Works by Mozart and Hadyn will be performed, with Vienna-based Daniel Adam Maltz playing the fortepiano — an instrument of those composers’ era.
“If the harpsichord and modern piano had a child, it would be the fortepiano,” Sinclair explains. “Audiences will get to hear the Haydn and Mozart with the actual sound they would have heard then.”
On Oct. 15 in Steinmetz Hall at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, the Bach society will premiere Ted Ricketts’ “War and Peace” oratorio, alongside “Ecce Cor Meum,” an oratorio by Paul McCartney.
Ricketts, who spent more than two decades as music director and producer for Walt Disney World, will attend the performance, which shows off “his classical side,” Sinclair says. No word on whether McCartney will attend to hear his work, in English titled “Behold My Heart” — but never say never. McCartney has visited Winter Park before, when “we had a brief conversation” about his oratorio, Sinclair says, “so he knew I wanted to do this.”
The Eroica Trio of pianist Erika Nickrenz, violinist Sara Parkins and cellist Sara Sant’Ambrogio will kick off the annual Visiting Artists Series with a concert at 3 p.m. Oct. 29 in Tiedtke Concert Hall.
The Bach Vocal Artists Series, featuring classically trained singers, returns for a second year at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 2 with Handel’s ”Roman Vespers of 1707 in Knowles Memorial Chapel at Rollins.
“What’s cool about this program is it’s young Handel, very bright sounding,” Sinclair says. Perhaps because the vespers forever live in the shadow of Handel’s “Messiah,” “you don’t hear them done often.”
The holiday season will bring “A Voctave Christmas,” with the popular vocal group performing at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 26 in Steinmetz Hall. The Bach society’s traditional “A Classic Christmas” will be presented in Knowles Chapel at 2 and 5 p.m. Dec. 9 and 10.
2023 brings the monthlong 89th annual Bach Festival, which opens with organist Adam Brakel at 7:30 Feb. 2 in Knowles Chapel.
At 3 p.m. Feb. 3, Fuoco Obligato continues the Visiting Artists Series with what Sinclair says will be “an eclectic program of high-end music with an interesting and international flavor.”
The popular “Spiritual Spaces” concert of music to soothe the soul will take place at 5 p.m. Feb. 10 in the chapel, which at 3 p.m. Feb. 11 will host “The Splendor of Baroque Magnificats.” The Bach Vocal Artists will perform songs of praise by Vivaldi, Telemann and others.
Paul Moravec’s “Sanctuary Road” will be performed in the chapel at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 17. For the work, librettist Mark Campbell interpreted the slave narratives published in 1872 in “The Underground Railroad” by William Still. Bass-baritone Dashon Burton, who performed on the Grammy-nominated recording, will be among the soloists.
Florence Price, recognized as the first female African American symphonic composer, will feature on the 3 p.m. Feb. 18 program at Knowles Chapel. Headlining the concert: Price’s award-winning Symphony No. 1 in E minor, which became the first piece of music by a Black American woman played by a major orchestra when the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed it in 1933.
“Concertos by Candlelight” returns at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 23 in the chapel, and then Goldstein returns to Winter Park to play Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1 at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 24. That concert also features Routa Kroumovitch and Alvaro Gomez leading Louis Spohr’s “Sinfonia Concertante in A major for Two Violins, Op. 48.”
Goldstein performs another program at 3 p.m. Feb. 25, this time in Tiedtke Concert Hall.
The Insights & Sounds Series examines “Literary Folk and Fairy Tales” at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 27 in Tiedtke Concert Hall, with Lang’s “The Little Match Girl Passion.” The work is told with just four singers, who play percussion instruments as well.
“It’s one of those phenomenal new pieces,” Sinclair says. “It’s an artistic experience.”
Countertenor Brennan Hall, a graduate of Dr. Phillips High School in Orlando and Rollins College, will return to Central Florida to solo in a performance of Bach’s Magnificat in D major at 7:30 p.m. March 2 in Knowles Chapel. And at 3 p.m. March 3, the annual festival concludes with Rossini’s Stabat Mater and Schubert’s “Great” Symphony No. 9 in Knowles Chapel.
The season continues just two
weeks later, at 3 p.m. March 17, when Tine Thing Helseth and the women of her brass ensemble perform in Knowles Chapel.
March 29 sees the return of the unique “Voices of Light,” Richard Einhorn’s choral work that accompanies a screening of the silent film “The Passion of Joan of Arc.” It will be performed at 7:30 p.m. in Knowles Chapel.
A concert of Dvořák’s Stabat Mater and Concerto for Cello in B Minor will be performed at Knowles Chapel at 7:30 p.m. April 27 and 28. Award-winning Belgian cellist Camille Thomas will join the Bach society’s musicians. The season ends May 16 with a 7:30 p.m. performance of “Songs for the Soul” in the chapel. The Bach Vocal Artists will perform unaccompanied choral music, dating from the Renaissance through the current day. Sinclair says the works will be meaningful and emotional: “It’s music that always speaks to me.”