Most ambitious season for Hill-based Bach festival

The Chestnut Hill-based Bach Festival of Philadelphia has announced a 30th anniversary season that is among the most ambitious ever offered during those three decades of honoring the man many consider to be the greatest classical composer of them all. Chestnut Hiller Jonathan Sternberg, internationally acclaimed maestro and pedagogue and the festival’s artistic director, has set his sights on recapturing the musical stature it once held in the glory days of the late Michael Korn’s directorship.

“The 2005/06 season marks the 30th anniversary of the Bach Festival of Philadelphia, founded in 1976 by Michael Korn with the assistance of dedicated volunteers from Chestnut Hill,” Sternberg said. “It produced many landmark performances of baroque music throughout Philadelphia with its former resident ensembles, the Philadelphia Singers and the Concerto Soloists, now the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia.

“As a presenter, the Bach Festival has also played host to a vast array of internationally acclaimed musicians and scholars, ranging from Johann Sebastian Bach’s own St. Thomas Boys Choir of Leipzig through the Tallis Scholars of London and musicologist Christoph Wolff of Harvard University.”

Sternberg continued by pointing out that the festival’s 30th anniversary season is dedicated to the memory of Korn, also founder of the Philadelphia Singers and Chorus America. During the first 15 years of the festival’s existence, Korn inspired all those who came in contact with his distinctive genius. The 15th anniversary of his untimely death in 1991 will be commemorated in October of 2006 with an exact replica of his first “Basically Bach Festival” weekend.

The 2005/06 season of the Bach Festival of Philadelphia will get underway on Monday, Sept. 19 at 7 p.m. when pianist Jeremy Denk performs all six of Bach’s Partitas for solo keyboard in the auditorium of the Ethical Society on Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia. Chinese pianist Eric Fung will continue the investigation of Bach’s keyboard music with a program that includes his delightful “Italian” Concerto on Sunday, Oct. 2, at 3 p.m., again in the Ethical Society’s auditorium. Markus Eichenlaub, organist of Limburg Cathedral in Germany, will perform a vast and varied program including the Prelude & Fugue in E-flat major on Saturday, Oct. 15, at 7 p.m. on the magnificent Mander organ of the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill. The keyboard series will conclude on Sunday, Nov. 20, at 2:30 p.m. with harpsichordist Jory Vinikour in the Keneseth Israel Synagogue in Elkins Park. His program includes the “Goldberg” Variations.

The suites Bach composed for solo cello are among his most admired and best loved scores. Cellist Matt Haimowitz will play the first, third, fifth and sixth on Sunday, Dec. 3, at 7 p.m. in Chestnut Hill’s Woodmere Art Museum. London Baroque will perform Bach’s Trio Sonatas for solo organ in their own transcription for strings and harpsichord on Monday, Jan. 30, 2006, at 7 p.m. in the authentic colonial style of Old St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in the Society Hill section of Philadelphia.

Scottish guitarist Paul Galbraith will perform his own transcriptions of Bach’s Cello Suites Nos. 2 & 4 plus a selection of other arrangements, as well, on Tuesday, Feb. 28, at 7 p.m. in the unadorned beauty of the Baptist Church of Chestnut Hill.

The highlight of the season will be “Festival Week 2006: the Orchestral Works and More.” The Cleveland Baroque Orchestra will perform the “Brandenburg” Concerti Nos. 3 & 4, the Orchestral Suite No. 2 and the “Summer” Concerto from The Four Seasons by Vivaldi on Friday, March 17, at 7 p.m. in the neo-Norman splendor of the Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church.

For more information, call 215-247-BACH or visit http://www.Bach-Fest.org.

NEW YORK DEBUT

Trio Excelsior! will make its New York City recital debut on Sunday, Sept. 18, at 5:30 p.m. in the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, located at 154 West 57th Street in midtown Manhattan. Violinist Gabriel Gordon, cellist Ulrich Boeckheler and pianist Marja Kaisla will perform a program featuring Beethoven’s Trio in E-flat major, Opus 1, no. 1, Arensky’s Trio No. 1 in D minor, Opus 32, and Dvorak’s “Dumky” Trio in E minor, Opus 90.

Describing the program, West Mt. Airy’s Kaisla said, “It’s a very important score because it was the first work that Beethoven, himself, considered worthy enough to have published. It’s full of life and energy from the beginning of its first movement through to the last measure of its fourth movement. It explodes with a happy enthusiasm that makes it the perfect choice for the opening work on a chamber music recital.”

Kaisla called Anton Arensky’s First Piano Trio very different in tone and style. Composed during the last decades of the 19th century, it’s emotionally passionate in a manner many Americans define as “typically Russian.” The second movement elegie is “exquisite” while the third movement scherzo “sparkles.” Kaisla considers the closing presto to be “life affirming.”