Bach Festival rounded out “Invention No. 2,” on Sunday after four days of performances, master classes and presentations.
“Invention No. 2” comes as the second section under the annual festival’s new tripartite format for the 2023-24 academic year that splits the Bach Festival into three different inventions spaced throughout the year rather than one multiple-day festival. The first of these inventions occurred on Oct. 21 and was titled “Bach and Bartók.”
“Invention No. 2” kicked off on Thursday with four days of Bach performances, leading into the final performance “Reich-n-Bach” on Sunday.
“We’ve been expanding the season ever since I joined, adding events and really creating a new mission for the Bach Festival, updating it, making it more like the festivals and the music making in the twenty-first century,” said Dirk Garner, professor in the Conservatory of Music and artistic director for the Bach Festival.
Thursday started with a master class by Nicholas Phan, a three-time Grammy-nominated voice performance musician.
Following the master class, Michael Marissen, the emeritus professor of music history at Swarthmore College, gave a lectured about the antisemitic rhetoric of the St. John Passion and the works of the Lutheran World.
“He’ll talk to the students in the orchestra about the difficulties of antisemitism in all of Bach’s music and really all of the Lutheran World, not just Bach,” Garner said.
Friday continued the festivities with a Fire & Grace & Ash performance titled “Partita Americana.”
“They specialize taking early music, particularly Bach, and actually fusing it with Americana,” Garner said. “So what they’re playing for us Friday night does exactly that: they start with Bach and immediately fuse it with American music like bluegrass.”
Continuing into the weekend, Phan presented his project “Bach52,” a recording project that promotes the works and necessity of Bach’s works.
“He is collaborating with the local orchestra, Baroque Orchestra Les Delices and Bach Festival is sponsoring it. He will be doing his podcast and will be doing a recital with the orchestra singing mostly tenor arias, which is really peculiar and really awesome,” Garner said.
Sunday concluded this section of Bach Festival with a performance titled “Reich-n-Bach,” which was conducted by Garner and featured BWV: Cleveland’s Bach Choir and many staff members filling out the orchestra.
“The final performance, titled ‘Reich-n-Back,’ fusing the music of Steve Reich with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach,” Garner said.
“There are two big pieces of Reich on their piano phase, and we see our piano faculty and BW alum Rob Kovacs play piano face and that piece is remarkable,” Garner said. “It’s written for two pianists, playing the same tune at the start, then separating apart before coming together again at the end. And Rob Kovacs plays it alone; one piano in each hand.”
“Part of it is that we really needed to break out of just that one weekend. We’ve been having that one amazing weekend for the past ninety years now. If we want to have more opportunities and if we want our students to continue to experience Baroque music and experience the best Baroque professionals here on our campus, than we have to do more than just that weekend,” Garner said.
Bach Festival has been a staple of the community’s involvement with BW for over 90 years. The new changes allow for more events, as seen with this year’s festivals.
“It’s not 1940 anymore. We’re really trying to help the Bach Festival fit into the 21st century a lot better and we can’t do that in one weekend,” Garner said. “It’s important to me that our students continue to engage with the world of Bach.”
