Victoria Bach Festival offers more than Johann Sebastian

Artistic Director Craig Hella Johnson and concertmaster Stephen Redfield
following a performance of Mendelssohn's violin concerto, 2009.

by Valerie Cowan

Victoria might not be the biggest town in Texas, but it certainly packs a musical punch during the month of June with the annual Victoria Bach Festival. From June 7 to 11, musicians from around the country will entertain guests of all ages from a wide variety of towns and musical backgrounds.

With about 40 percent of attendees coming from outside Victoria, “the Victoria Bach Festival is a source of pride in the community,” said VBF Executive Director Nina Di Leo. “It’s been 36 years that Victoria has welcomed musicians from all over the country to our city to make music.”

Five-time Grammy nominee Craig Hella Johnson took on the position of artistic director in 1992 and has since expanded the program from a university-sponsored, local event to a nationally recognized organization with affiliates including Conspirare, Johnson’s own choral ensemble, as well as the Houston Masterworks Chorus, Austin Chamber Music Center, and Texas State Chorale.

“It has blossomed from a mostly community-based organization to one that includes musicians coming from around the country,” said Di Leo. “It has also grown in the breadth of composers and genres of music represented. Now we celebrate not only the genius of Johann Sebastian Bach but also the work of composers throughout the ages.”

Johnson also initiated the festival’s New Young Artists program, which provides an opportunity for highly talented musicians at the start of their careers to take the stage. Johnson and his creative team, which includes New Young Artist Coordinator Faith DeBow and Chamber Music Coordinator Michelle Schumann, choose the young musicians through a series of applications and auditions. The New Young Artists program has hosted 43 blooming musicians since its genesis in 1992.

This year’s young artists include baritone Dashon Burton, flutist Hilary Janysek, and soprano Nicole Greenidge. The three will perform a formal concert during the evening of June 7. The following afternoon, they will host a family-friendly musical presentation at the Victoria Public Library.

“It’s fun to see young musicians who, the night before, were performing in concert dress in the concert hall and the next day are on the floor in the library engaging the children… making classical music an approachable form in a familiar environment,” said Di Leo.

Family drum circle led by David Hillendahl
at the Victoria Public Library, 2009.

The library also holds the Big Bang Rhythm Party on Saturday afternoon during which members of the percussion section of the Victoria Bach Festival Orchestra will lead a percussion and rhythm workshop that’s fun for all ages.

This year’s performance lineup also includes The Fifth Wheel, an evening of quintets performed by members of the Victoria Bach Festival Orchestra; a Latin American- and Spanish-infused performance by the Texas Guitar Quartet; and Kick Up Your Heels, international dances for small ensembles presented by the Artisan Quartet and VBF artists.

Headlining the Victoria Bach Festival on Saturday evening will be Roberto Sierra’s Missa Latina ‘Pro Pace” (For Peace). Under the direction of Johnson, Victoria Bach Festival Orchestra will combine forces with Chorus Conspirare Symphonic Choir to create an ensemble of nearly 200 musicians. This Caribbean-influenced piece will feature soprano Heidi Grant Murphy and baritone Nathaniel Webster.

For the first time, the Victoria Bach Festival will hold the week’s finale at the brand new Victoria Fine Arts Center. The approximately 1500 seat facility was built by the school district as part of a bond.

“It’s a beautiful new facility that just opened this past spring, said Di Leo. “We’re very pleased to be performing there for the first time.”

As executive director, Di Leo finds the Victoria Bach Festival experience very rewarding.

“It’s really kind of a big family that comes together every June,” said Di Leo. “I love to see the engagement of young people, and I love to see the city come alive with music for a week every June.”

Ticket prices to attend VBF’s evening performances range from ten to thirty dollars, and student and senior discounts are available. The daily afternoon programs are free. For more information on tickets and performances, visit http://victoriabachfestival.org/.

Bach's Christmas Story continues

Johann Sebastian Bach composed a great deal of sacred music and these works were to lead the congregation into the spirit of the church year. Advent is the time before Christmas and Bach took six cantatas from the holiday celebrations and combined them into his Christmas Oratorio. This Sunday KPAC broadcasts the fourth part of this work, featuring a new recording with Riccardo Chailly and the Gewandhaus Orchestra. This cantata deals with the birth of Jesus and his naming ceremony. Join Ron Moore this Sunday afternoon at 2 for this spirited performance of this Holiday classic on KPAC & KTXI.

Christmas Oratorio Part III

This Sunday join Ron Moore for the third installment of J.S. Bach's Christmas Oratorio. This cantata tells of the Three Kings and their journey to Bethlehem. First performed at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, we celebrate the Holidays with a new recording of this Christmas favorite on the very Sunday's Bach intended them. To add a home town touch this recording features the Leipzig based Gewandhaus orchestra and the voices of the Dresden Chamber Choir with soloists, Carolyn Sampson, Wiebke Lehmkuhl, Wolfram Lattke and bass, Konstantin Wolff. The music director is Riccardo Chailly.

Hear the Third Sunday of Christmas this Sunday afternoon at 2 on KPAC & KTXI.

Bach for Moore

Join Ron Moore this Sunday afternoon at 2 for an authentic taste of Christmas from the 1730's with Johann Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio. The Second Day of Christmas starts with the shepherds abiding in the fields. This is the second cantata of Bach's Holiday classic featuring the Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Dresden Radio Choir and Riccardo Chailly. Hear it this Sunday afternoon at 2 on KPAC & KTXI.

Next soloist

What Jennifer Koh has been up to lately, she'll be here in October to play Prokofiev's Second Violin Concerto with the San Antonio Symphony!

A Lunch Break With a Bach Partita as the Main Course
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

Word has gotten out about Lunchtime Concerts, the informal free performances of chamber works at the intimate reading room in Philosophy Hall on the Columbia University campus. The series, sponsored by the Miller Theater and Columbia’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, opened on Monday afternoon at 12:30 with the exciting young violinist Jennifer Koh playing Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D minor. And people started arriving up to 45 minutes before the program began to get a seat.

About 200 people eventually crowded into the room, which is perfect for chamber music. Some sat atop desks lining the walls; others stood in the back. The programs are short, in keeping with the theme of enjoying some music during your lunch break, and only one substantial work is played. It was revealing to hear this astonishing Bach partita on its own. For all its greatness, the piece can get swamped when performed alongside the works for violin and piano typically played at a recital.

This was the first of six programs Ms. Koh will play presenting all of the Bach partitas. (The series will also offer Benjamin Hochman playing the Bach piano partitas and Alisa Weilerstein [ed. Who was just HERE in SAN ANTONIO!]playing the Bach cello suites.) Following the Lunchtime Concerts tradition, she first spoke to the audience about the piece. Bach, who was working in Weimar when he completed his six partitas in 1720, was surely influenced by the Weimar violinist Johann Paul von Westhoff, who had already published a collection of solo violin partitas.

Ms. Koh played the opening measures of the Allemande, Courant and Sarabande from a Westhoff suite, alternating the excerpts with opening measures of the corresponding movements by Bach. Westhoff’s partitas fired Bach’s imagination about ways to write for the violin. Bach took it from there. And how.

The Partita in D minor has a curious structure. After four dance movements, which last 12 minutes together, the work ends with the monumental Chaconne, a set of rhapsodic variations on a stately triple-meter dance theme, totaling 15 minutes.

Ms. Koh conveyed the naturalness of the phrasing in the flowing Allemande and brought Baroque zest to the Courant. The gutsy way she played the chords in the Sarabande allowed the wistful melodic line to shine. And she balanced intensity and buoyancy in the fleet Giga.

Finally, she gave a deeply expressive account of the Chaconne, dispatching the challenges with such security that you did not notice the sheer virtuosity at work. The ovation was so ardent that Ms. Koh, who had been visibly engrossed in her performance, wiped away tears.

The next program in the series of Bach violin works is on Wednesday at
Philosophy Hall, Columbia University, Broadway at 116th Street, Morningside
Heights; millertheater.com.

Far from goldbricking!

Welsh harpist Catrin Finch makes her Detusche Grammophon solo recording debut with her own arrangement of Bach’s masterpiece for keyboard, The Goldberg Variations – arguably the most challenging project of her career. The album will be available exclusively from iTunes on May 26 and receive complete distribution on June 23, 2009.
Catrin’s meteoric rise to fame includes being named the Royal Harpist to H.R.H. The Prince of Wales from 2000 through 2004. This honored position was last held in 1873, making the appointment a truly momentous occasion for the young harpist (she was still at the Royal Academy of Music at the time). “When I re-established the ancient tradition of appointing a harpist to the Prince of Wales, little did I imagine that I would find someone with such a rare and special talent as Catrin” – H.R.H The Price of Wales
Since then, Catrin has traveled the world and worked tirelessly to expand not only the popularity of this ancient instrument but also the repertory. This was the motivation that resulted with her meticulously transcribing Bach’s monumental work, a process that took a year to complete. Though excerpts have been performed before, this is the first recording to feature the complete Goldberg Variations arranged for harp. “My hope is that my Goldberg Variations for the harp will come to occupy a respected place in the harp’s core repertoire, as always happens to good arrangements,” according to Catrin. “I hope they will be accepted by the doubters, by people who say they weren’t expecting to enjoy it, but did. I’m also doing it for my own pleasure – I’ve learned most of the harp repertoire, and my way forward is always to learn new pieces. Bach is one of my favorite composers, and the only way I can play more of him is by putting him onto my instrument.”
Catrin’s virtuoso talent is more than equal to the challenge Bach presents – a challenge that many pianists cannot even surmount. With intricate fingerings and the complexly chromatic 25th variation, there is no shortage of awe-inspiring technical brilliance in Catrin’s performance. She is just as comfortable with the subtle shadings and lyrical moments which allow her harp to sing and resonate in a manner many pianists would surely envy.
“With one touch of the strings – the opening notes of the Bach – Ms. Finch pulverized the stereotype of harpists as pretty, angelic strummers, blowing it away with a big, strong sound.” – The New York Times on a performance of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor

First Listen: Hélène Grimaud

Today, February 3, pianist Hélène Grimaud joins the ranks of Bruce Springsteen, M. Ward and Animal Collective when NPR Music launches an Exclusive First Listen of her debut Bach album. NPR Music will offer an on-demand stream of the entire album as well as Grimaud's performance of Bach's Prelude in E major, BWV 878 as a free download until the disc is officially released on February 10. The stream and song download are both available at NPR Music. Though NPR Music has offered Exclusive First Listen pages for a variety of high-profile pop, rock and alternative artists, Grimaud's 'Bach' is the first classical album to be featured in this way.
In Hélène Grimaud's first recording of Bach's music, listeners will find repertoire and interpretation choices that reflect not simply Bach's notes, but his very perspective on the musical form. As has come to be expected of this strikingly individualistic artist, the disc is both provoking and profound. 'Bach' includes Bach's Concerto for Piano no. 1 in D minor performed with Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, a work originally intended for violin, but transcribed by Bach himself for organ and then later in the form we find here. Thus the album features Bach transcribed by Liszt, Bach transcribed by Busoni, Bach transcribed by Rachmaninov, and Bach transcribed by Bach. Each transcription is juxtaposed with a prelude and fugue in the same tonality from The Well-Tempered Clavier - in E major, A minor, and C minor - highlighting the modern composers' musical and historical perspectives while simultaneously underlining the source material.
Grimaud will tour Houston, TX; New York City, NY; La Jolla, CA; and Chicago, IL in late February and March in support of the album. Performance dates and times can be found on her website.
Hélène Grimaud was born in Aix-en Provence in the south of France in 1969. She studied with Jacqueline Courtin at the conservatory there, and subsequently in Marseille with Pierre Barbizet. At the age of 13, she was accepted by the Paris Conservatory where she won the first prize in piano in 1985. That July, immediately after graduating, Grimaud recorded Rachmaninov’s Sonata no. 2 and the complete Etudes-Tableaux op. 33 (Grand Prix du disque, 1986). She studied additionally with Gyorgy Sandor and Leon Fleisher. The year 1987 marked a turning point in her career, with appearances at MIDEM in Cannes and at the piano festival La Roque d’Anthéron, her first recital in Tokyo and Daniel Barenboim’s invitation to perform with the Orchestre de Paris. Grimaud has since performed with many of the world’s major orchestras and renowned conductors. She records exclusively for Deutsche Grammophon.

Recent musical finds

2005: Unknown 1713 aria by Bach, Alles mit Gott, found in Weimar, Germany, library.

2005: Manuscript of long-lost 1826 piano duet of Beethoven's Grosse Fuge, found in a Pennsylvania seminary library.

2006: Oldest known manuscripts in Bach's hand - copies he made when he was a teenager of works by other composers - discovered in same Weimar library.

Today...
Bach fan thrills to discovery of lost 1724 pages
By Tim Smith

For 25 years, Teri Noel Towe has deeply treasured a slim volume bound in red morocco that he acquired at an auction house, a volume containing six handwritten pages of a musical manuscript.
"Just pick it up," says Towe, a trust and estate lawyer in New York, "and a funny electricity goes through your body. You are holding in your hands something Johann Sebastian Bach held in his." Only Bach would have held a little bit more.
The manuscript is missing pages three and four of what should be eight pages of the original organ part for the cantata Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam (Christ Our Lord Came to the Jordan), composed in 1724 and numbered BWV 7 in the Bach catalog.
Much of the score was written out by a Bach pupil, but several of the composer's own notations are clearly recognizable, making this a valuable item - Towe paid $10,000 for it in 1983.
Pages three and four, containing the last measures of the opening choral movement and all of the following bass aria, cover the front and back of a music sheet presumed lost. Until now.
Thanks to an inquisitive Frenchman named Philippe d'Anchald and the detection power of the Internet, the missing link has been discovered about 30 miles from Paris, where it has been housed in a museum, never fully identified, since 1918.
Although not quite as newsy as the discovery of unknown music by Bach, the missing pages should interest scholars. The organ part used in performances of the cantata today is based on the extant harpsichord part, Towe says. Now it will be possible to see exactly what the organist saw on pages three and four of his score at the cantata's premiere in St. Thomas' Church in Leipzig on June 24, 1724.
"I'm thrilled this has been found," says Towe. "What Philippe has accomplished would not have been possible without the digital age."
D'Anchald, a lawyer for an international bank, is a Bach enthusiast (his eldest son is named Jean-Sebastien). About six years ago, while doing online research about a historic organ in Germany, he came across Towe's home pages and an article detailing the missing pages of the 1724 organ music.
"I was fascinated by the story of that manuscript and put it in the recesses of my memory," d'Anchald says in an e-mail. Earlier this summer, that memory was jogged "quite by chance" when a historian friend of d'Anchald's asked him to look at the copy of a will left by Sigismund Neukomm, an Austrian-born composer who died in Paris in 1858.
D'Anchald recalled reading Neukomm's name in Towe's article. On the organ manuscript is an inscription that identifies the music as a gift Neukomm received from August Eberhard Muller, one of Bach's successors as cantor at St. Thomas' Church. It is known that Neukomm visited Leipzig in 1808.
Perusing Neukomm's will, "I noticed that there were a few music manuscripts in the inventory, so I wondered where they could be," d'Anchald says.
That curiosity led to a Google search yielding "a very short piece of information - two lines - mentioning that in a small museum in a city south of Paris called Melun there was a sheet of music given by Neukomm to a certain Auguste Vincent," d'Anchald says, "and that it was probably a Bach autograph."
He obtained from the museum's curator photos of the music sheet and e-mailed them to Towe. On Aug. 22, d'Anchald traveled to the museum for a first-hand look. "Now I can affirm that the Melun manuscript contains the missing pages three and four," he says.
Towe, who has compared the photo copies with the rest of his volume, is equally sure.
The two 60-year-old men, who have never met and have only communicated via the Internet, are still exchanging theories on why part of this score was ever extracted and presented by Neukomm to Vincent, an obscure figure who studied piano, d'Anchald discovered, with a friend of Chopin's.
Towe, who has lectured for the American Bach Society and is involved in noted Baltimore filmmaker Mike Lawrence's Bach Project, a documentary currently in production, has traced much of his prized Bach manuscript's history.
It found its way to London, where it was bound (on the cover is printed "John Sebastian Bach"). It was exhibited there in 1904, sold in Germany in 1913 and sold again in the 1930s by a New York autograph dealer to a private collector.
When it came up for sale again, Towe, who had loved the cantata since first hearing it during his college days at Princeton, was waiting.
"What I acquired on Oct. 20, 1983," he says, "was the privilege, the pleasure, and, above all, the responsibility, of being its custodian for a while."
Towe has no immediate plans to travel to Melun to see the missing pages and he doesn't anticipate ever possessing them.
"I don't know if French law would even permit it," he says. "If I won Power Ball, yeah, maybe I'd negotiate for it. But my father used to say '40 percent of something is better than 100 percent of nothing.' I have 75 percent. And for the other 25 percent, a digital scan of the pages is more than satisfactory to me."

Hyphenated Names

There was a time with piano recital programs had many hyphenated names, like Wagner-Tausig, Beethoven-Liszt and Bach-Busoni. Even though we modern media types are used to hearing baroque music, even on ancient instruments, that wasn't the case in the late 19th century. Great musicians knew of Bach and his contributions, but how to share this music with an audience? The few harpsichords that survived were dilapidated antiques and the piano was considered better in every way so play baroque keyboard music on that. But, what about Bach's great organ works? There was no shortage of organists, but pianists wanted in on the act. It was Franz Liszt, the great transcriber that started the ball rolling by playing Bach's organ music in his concerts.

Later after an organ recital that the mother of one of Ferruccio Busoni's students suggested to the great pianist that he transcribe one of the works enjoyed during the concert for piano. Little did she know what she was starting. Now a days it is Busoni's transcriptions of Bach that are his most performed works.

The piano is the great imitator and can clip away harpsichord-like or fill a hall with its powerful bass like an organ, no wonder it is considered the universal instrument. On the Piano this Sunday Russian pianist Nikolai Demidenko plays the music of Bach through the transcriptions of Busoni and Liszt.

The Piano is heard Sunday afternoon at 5 on KPAC and KTXI.

host Randy Anderson

Americans take on Bach

I remember a TV chef saying that cooking chicken is like a painter approaching a blank canvas, "you can make chicken taste like anything". I find that the keyboard music of Bach is like that, a performer can bring anything to this music. Think about the performances that are church-like in there solemnity. Then there is fast players like Argerich and Martins. There are all the colors of the rainbow in Wendy Carlos Bach on synthesizer or the polyphonic juggling of Canadian pianist Glenn Gould.

On the Piano this Sunday afternoon, we sample some new recordings by American pianists playing the Partitas of Johann Sebastian Bach. The program starts with a quick listen to a number of distinctive Bach pianists and then we hear two new recordings featuring Richard Goode (right) and Murray Periaha (above left).

The Piano this Sunday afternoon at 5 on KPAC and KTXI.

Randy Anderson, host