Welcome Bach

A rejuvenated Bach Festival recaptures its original glory.

by Peter Burwasser

The Bach Festival of Philadelphia turns 29 this season. It is a cause for celebration, to be sure, but in a very real sense, the festival has been reborn. It began life as a labor of love for the founder and then director of the Philadelphia Singers, Michael Korn. Korn was a masterful director of the great choral works of Bach and used his reputation to attract many superb musicians. Korn's tragic death in 1991 was a major loss to the Philadelphia music community and signaled a somnolent period for the Bach Festival, which contracted into a series of small, poorly marketed concerts and recitals in Chestnut Hill.

Perhaps sensing an imminent demise, the festival's board of directors called upon the venerable conductor (and Philadelphia resident) Jonathan Sternberg to assume the post of artistic director in March last year. Guido Houben was also brought in as executive director. This turns out to be a fascinating and dynamic pairing. Houben, a German born and trained composer, has done post graduate work in nonprofit management, combining musical and marketing acumen in a way that has introduced notable vitality and imagination into the enterprise. Sternberg, an extremely well-connected eminence grise, is reinvigorating the Festival with diverse talent, including soprano Julianne Baird and pianist Charles Abramovic. He is himself a true pioneer in the field of contemporary baroque performance, as the conductor of some of the first recorded performances of Bach's cantatas in 1951.

Sternberg might just as well be speaking about his new job when he declares that "baroque music has a new lease on life." As an artist who has seen Bach performance undergo a sea-change in scholarship and audience appreciation in a generation, he is quick to cut through the debates over how to play the music. "What bothers me is that we are living in a celebrity culture, and Bach is no longer the celebrity but the performers are." He is sanguine on the subject of the authenticity of the instruments, a matter of tremendous interest among many younger performers. "We can play Bach perfectly fine on our new contraptions."

The festival has concerts planned for the whole season, which continues through June, but the coming days are a climax of activity with seven Bach programs in the offing. Four relatively unknown Lutheran masses will be performed as integral religious ceremonies at four Philadelphia churches, utilizing the exceptional musical faculties at the specific institutions. The culmination of that series will be two performances of a fifth mass, the mighty Mass in B Minor, one as a religious ceremony and one as a concert performance, both under the baton of Maestro Sternberg with the Bach Festival Orchestra and a trim vocal company supplied by the fine locally based Voces Novae et Antiquae. This magnificent work is a cornerstone of Western music, and Sternberg is far from alone when he sings its praises. "I discover new things in it every time I encounter it. It is one of the most incredible pieces of music ever written."

The Mass in B Minor, like all of Bach, gives the musicians very little concrete direction about performance practice. "There is absolutely no indication whatsoever about tempi and dynamics," declares Sternberg. His inclination, hewing back to an earlier style of Bach playing, is to slower tempi than are currently fashionable. "I have a private recording of the music conducted by Georges Enescu [the great Romanian composer and musician] that is remarkable. It is slower than anything you hear today, and it makes the music sound much more religious."

Bach spent part of his career as a religious composer, but he also had a considerable stint as a court composer writing exclusively secular music. Two other concerts feature music from that second world, including a a recital by the extraordinary pianist Jeremy Denk that is a co-venture with the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. There will also be a special concert centering around a single piece of music, the great "Chaconne" from the Partita for Solo Violin in D minor. This magical work has fascinated many composers through the ages, and it has received many interesting treatments, including piano versions by Brahms (for left hand alone) and Busoni, a piano and violin arrangement by Schumann, and a solo guitar edition by Segovia. All of those manifestations will appear on a recital Tuesday evening, beginning with the original as played by Philadelphia Orchestra violinist Jason DePue. Later in the season, two other instrumental masterpieces are scheduled, The Art of the Fugue and Musical Offering.

Sternberg vividly recalls the excitement that his early recordings of Bach generated among the music-loving public. Those efforts ignited a fire that still burns today. "The music is loved even more now."

The Bach Festival of Philadelphia, various venues, visit www.bach-fest.org or 215-247-4020 for specific events.