Chicago's Bach Week Festival Unveils 2020 Season

The Chicago area's 47th annual Bach Week Festival has announced details of its 2020 season of concerts in Chicago and Evanston, Illinois, May 1 to May 30, 2020, including the Baroque music festival's first mainstage period-instrument program and its first concert in Chicago's Ravenswood neighborhood, among other events.

"Variety has always been a Bach Week Festival feature, and this year's programming offers that in abundance," says Richard Webster, Bach Week's music director since 1975. "There's a spectrum of textures and colors in every concert."

Webster played harpsichord and organ at Evanston's first Bach Week in 1974, which he helped organize, while a senior at Northwestern University's music school.

"Concertgoers will hear a favorite, unaccompanied work for solo cello; concertos for one, two, and four soloists; duets; period and modern instrument ensembles in diverse configurations; vocal soloists; a chorus; and music by some of Bach's renowned contemporaries," Webster says. "And then there's pianist Sergei Babayan's Chopin and Bach recital, truly a special attraction, which the festival is thrilled to present."

Babayan, the celebrated Armenian-American pianist praised by The New York Times for his "consummate technique and insight," will bring his critically acclaimed Chopin recital to the festival in a weeknight program that will include piano-duet arrangements of works by festival namesake Johann Sebastian Bach.

Festival to open with all-Bach program on period instruments

Bach Week's 2020 season will open on May 1 at Chicago's North Park University with the festival's first purely period-instrument mainstage concert, featuring local and out-of-town musicians prominent in the early music scene.

Webster notes that since its founding, which predates the period-instrument movement, Bach Week has focused on performances on modern orchestral instruments, as does Chicago's Music of the Baroque organization, for example.

So why the switch for this season's opening concert?

"It was a necessity-is-the-mother-of-invention opportunity," Webster says.

Bach Week traditionally draws many of its musicians from Chicago's Lyric Opera Orchestra, he says. But with Lyric Opera's stagings of Richard Wagner's epic Ring cycle in April and early May, those musicians are unavailable.

At Webster's behest, Chicago early music specialist Jason Moy, who directs the Baroque Ensemble at DePaul University's School of Music and serves as Bach Week's principal keyboardist (harpsichord and organ), curated a period-instrument program and assembled the musicians.

"It's an exciting new twist to the festival," Webster says.

Among those making their Bach Week debuts are Baroque flutist Leighann Daihl Ragusa, a major prizewinner in the National Flute Association's 2007 Baroque Flute Competition. Chicago Classical Review has praised her "spirited, stylish, and nuanced playing." She and Moy will open the concert with Bach's Sonata in B Minor for flute and harpsichord, BWV 1030.

Other new festival faces are Debra Nagy, Baroque oboe, and concertmaster Allison Nyquist, Baroque violin, who have prominent parts in Bach's church cantata "Aus der Tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir," BWV 131 (Out of the depths I call, Lord, to You), which is receiving its first Bach Week performance.

Nagy was recently appointed principal oboe with Boston's Handel & Haydn Society. The New York Times characterized her playing as "distinctly sensual...pliant, warm, and sweet." Nyquist is artistic director of Nashville's Music City Baroque orchestra and Baroque violin professor at Vanderbilt University's Blair School of Music.

Cantata 131 also marks the Bach Week debut of Patrick Muehleise, 2019 tenor recipient of The American Prize Chicago Oratorio Award. His recent engagements include Mozart's Requiem with Xian Zhang at the Aspen Music Festival and Monteverdi's "Vespers of 1610" under the baton of Jane Glover. South Florida Classical Review says he brings "real musicality and finely executed coloratura runs to his solos."

A choral ensemble comprising the Bach Week Festival Chorus, North Park University Chamber Singers, and members of professional chamber choir Bella Voce will sing Cantata 131 and also give the Bach Week premiere of Bach's motet Kyrie "Christe, du Lamm Gottes" in F major, BWV 233a (Christ, Thou Lamb of God).

Returning Bach Week favorite Josefien Stoppelenburg, soprano, will be soloist in the church cantata "Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut," BWV 199 (My Heart Swims in Blood).

One of the concert's period instrumentalists has a historic connection to the festival. Double-bassist Jerry Fuller of Evanston, founder of early music ensemble Arts Antigua and a regular with Chicago's Third Coast Baroque, performed on modern bass at Bach Week's 1974 launch.

The concert is a partnership between the Bach Week Festival and North Park University's School of Music, Art, and Theatre.

Sergei Babayan in recital: Chopin and Bach

Babayan will perform 28 solo piano works of Romantic-era Polish-French composer and pianist Frédéric Chopin on May 5, including 18 of Chopin's celebrated Mazurkas - miniature masterpieces based on lively Polish folk dances.

"Sergei's Chopin program, which he's touring overseas and in the U.S. to great acclaim, follows an unorthodox but highly satisfying layout," Webster says. "He groups and plays the Mazurkas by key signature rather than opus number, and it's a revelation to hear them this way."

Reviewing Babayan's 2019 Chopin recital at London's Wigmore Hall, a correspondent for Classic Source noted that the pianist, who "is riding high in the firmament," attracted "a veritable army of loyal disciples and followers" to the event. "The Mazurkas were a triumph and provided some of the most intimate and spontaneous Chopin-playing I have ever heard," the critic wrote.

Following the Chopin portion of his recital, Babayan will be joined on stage by pianist Fiona Queen of the Music Institute of Chicago for a selection of Hungarian composer György Kurtág's piano-four hands arrangements of J.S. Bach chorales.

"Granted, it's unexpected to find a mostly Chopin recital at a Bach festival," Webster says. "But Sergei is such an extraordinary artist that we welcome whatever he chooses to play in addition to Bach."

Babayan's appearance at the 2020 Bach Week Festival is sponsored by the Howard and Ursula Dubin Foundation.

Virtuoso soloists in works by Bach, Vivaldi, and Telemann

The festival will return to its traditional format of modern instruments with the concert May 8 in Evanston spotlighting accomplished instrumental soloists in works by J.S. Bach and his contemporaries Antonio Vivaldi and Georg Philipp Telemann.

Cellist David Cunliffe of the Black Oak Ensemble and Grammy-nominated Lincoln Trio will play Bach's unaccompanied Suite No. 3 in C Major, BWV 1009, perhaps the most popular of Bach's six suites for solo cello. Its prelude and six French dance movements radiate a positive energy that delights audiences and musicians alike.

Lyric Opera Orchestra violinists Kathleen Brauer, Diane Duraffourg-Robinson, and John Macfarlane and violinist Desirée Ruhstrat of the Lincoln Trio and Black Oak Ensemble will solo in Vivaldi's quadruple-violin Concerto in B Minor, RV 580, which Bach adored and rearranged as a concerto for four harpsichords.

Trumpeters Kevin Hartman and Channing Philbrick do the honors in Telemann's Overture-Suite in D Major, TWV 55:D18 for two trumpets, timpani, strings, and basso continuo (harpsichord). Hartman frequently performs with the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestras. Philbrick is co-assistant principal trumpet with the Lyric Opera Orchestra and second trumpet with the Grant Park Orchestra.

Pianist Babayan, who has been cycling through Bach's keyboard concertos on return visits to Bach Week, will solo in Bach's keyboard Concerto No. 6 in F Major, BWV 1057, the composer's own arrangement of his Brandenburg Concerto No. 4.

It will be the first time these Vivaldi, Telemann, and Bach concertos have been heard at Bach Week, Webster says.

The concert is sponsored by the Howard and Ursula Dubin and Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundations.

Bach by candlelight

Harpsichordist Moy and Lisette Kielson, past president of the American Recorder Society and former director of Bradley University's Collegium Musicum, will present an intimate, hourlong concert May 8 in the candlelit lobby of Evanston's Nichols Concert Hall following the evening's mainstage performance. Their Candlelight Concert program, titled "Trios for Two: Obbligato Sonatas of Johann Sebastian Bach," will feature recorder and harpsichord arrangements of J.S. Bach's "beautifully sonorous and vibrant obbligato sonatas," the artists say. The concert will include arrangements of the Organ Sonata, BWV 529, Flute Sonata, BWV 1020, and additional works to be announced.

Admission includes a glass of champagne and assorted fine chocolates.

This season's Candlelight Concert is supported by donations from Bach Week patrons who participated in a silent auction at the festival's fall 2019 Bachanalia benefit: Gail Belytschko, Michael Coleman, Dean Christian, Stephen Dyer, Cynthia Kirk, Naida Lodgaard, William George and Susan Ross, Matt Glover and Perry Sartori, a donor whose contribution is in memory of Edna Ruth and Robert Cover, and a donor who wishes to remain anonymous.

Bach Week comes to Ravenswood

For the Bach Week Festival's first Chicago foray beyond North Park University, a chamber ensemble of period-instrument players will perform a free, hourlong concert on May 30 at All Saints' Episcopal Church in the Ravenswood neighborhood, inspired by J.S. Bach's legendary weekly concerts at Café Zimmermann in Leipzig, Germany, the coffeehouse where Bach's Collegium Musicum group performed his music and works by his contemporaries.

The mid-afternoon performance, titled "Steeped in Bach," is curated by Bach Week's Moy, the concert's harpsichordist.

Moy promises "a charming afternoon of chamber music on period instruments" featuring instrumental works by Dieterich Buxtehude, Telemann, and Bach, including Bach's secular cantata "Amore traditore," BWV 203 (Treacherous Love), sung by bass-baritone Govertsen.

The ensemble will perform two of Telemann's acclaimed "Paris Quartets," which Gramophone magazine calls "among the most beguiling chamber works of the late-Baroque period."

They'll play one of Buxtehude's masterful Trio Sonatas, and festival music director Webster will offer a Bach organ prelude.

The free concert is funded through a generous donation from Bob and Margaret McCamant.

Funding for the 2020 Bach Week festival also comes from The MacArthur Funds for Arts and Culture at the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and the Illinois Arts Council.

A musical rite of spring on the North Shore since 1974, Bach Week is one of the Midwest's premiere Baroque music festivals. The event enlists musicians from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Lyric Opera of Chicago Orchestra, and other top-tier ensembles, while featuring some of the Chicago area's finest instrumental and vocal soloists and distinguished guest artists from out of town.

Tickets and Information

Single-admission tickets to each of the three principal concerts is $50 for VIP seating, $40 adult general admission, $25 seniors, $15 students.

Subscriptions packages for the three main concerts are $120 for VIP seating, $80 for adults, $60 for seniors, and $30 for students.

Admission to the May 8 Candlelight Concert is $25 and includes a glass of champagne and a selection of gourmet chocolates.

Tickets can be purchased online at bachweek.org or by phone, (800) 838-3006. For general festival information, phone 847-269-9050 or email info@bachweek.org.