{"id":13096,"date":"2012-06-19T10:04:53","date_gmt":"2012-06-19T14:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/?p=13096"},"modified":"2014-09-22T18:17:15","modified_gmt":"2014-09-22T22:17:15","slug":"a-community-celebrates-20-years-of-bach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2012\/a-community-celebrates-20-years-of-bach\/","title":{"rendered":"A Community Celebrates 20 Years of Bach"},"content":{"rendered":"

A German Bach specialist once observed that the music of Johann Sebastian Bach can be played successfully on modern or on period instruments, \u201cbut what you can\u2019t recreate is the audience of the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ken J. Nafziger<\/a>, artistic director and conductor for the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival<\/a>, notes the weeklong, mid-June festival at Eastern Mennonite University is blessed with enthusiastic and faithful audiences. At the conclusion of its 20-year anniversary festival this month, he said, \u201cThe community has claimed this festival as an important part of life here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Events included on-campus, ticketed festival concerts, and daily, free noon concerts downtown. In addition, Nafziger notes, \u201cAnyone can sit in on any rehearsals all week long.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bach \u201cjust seems indestructible. You can do anything with him,\u201d said 2012\u2019s featured composer and cellist Eugene Friesen<\/a>, a Berklee College of Music professor in Boston and artist-in-residence at New York\u2019s Cathedral of St. John the Divine.<\/p>\n

The Saturday night concert featured the world premiere of Friesen\u2019s \u201cGlory\u201d \u2013 commissioned to honor the Bach Festival\u2019s 20-year history. The 20-minute cantata used Jean Janzen\u2019s poem, \u201cA Catechism.\u201d Friesen and Janzen are cousins. The music incorporates Cuban and Latin rhythms along with compositional techniques that Bach used in his cantatas. The cantata was personalized for Friesen who found the words in Janzen\u2019s poem to be an appropriate memorial to a young family friend.<\/p>\n

Friesen\u2019s touring, children\u2019s \u201cCello Man\u201d show was received enthusiastically in a noon concert. For reasons of the cello\u2019s resemblance to the human voice and its versatility, the lifelong cellist said \u201cI schlep the cello\u201d rather than more portable instruments. He accompanied comic stories with pantomime and paired masks with music. After demonstrating cello blues and bluegrass, Friesen electrified the instrument for a haunting duet with a recording of humpbacked whales.<\/p>\n

The orchestra for the concerts includes approximately 60 professional musicians from around the United States. The choir, 50 in number, is a volunteer, mostly local choir. Many return yearly.<\/p>\n

Rehearsals are intense. Choral rehearsals began on the Saturday evening one week prior to the concert. Practice had to start earlier for \u201cGlory,\u201d says tenor soloist Les Helmuth<\/a>, who has performed in 18 of the 20 festivals. He found \u201cGlory\u201d \u201cvery, very challenging\u201d and also \u201ca highlight for me.\u201d Helmuth and Madeline Bender<\/a> were the soloists in Friesen\u2019s work. The first rehearsal of the new piece for the orchestra was on Wednesday prior to the Saturday concert.<\/p>\n

The Bach \u201cMass in B Minor\u201d opened the season. Nafziger described the work as the musical equivalent to the challenge of scaling Mount Everest. Conducting the piece for his 14th time, he said, \u201cI learned so many new things this time around that influenced tempo and dynamics.\u201d He reflected, with a slightly ironic smile, \u201cI felt I figured out \u2013 anew \u2013 what Bach had in mind!\u201d<\/p>\n

Soloists for the \u201cMass in B Minor\u201d included Bender, Heidi Kurtz<\/a>, Joel Ross<\/a>, Shannon Kiser<\/a> and James Richardson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A large crowd attended the noon performance of Igor Stravinsky\u2019s tragicomic \u201cSoldier\u2019s Tale,\u201d featuring Ted Swartz<\/a> and Ingrid DeSanctis<\/a>, along with a chamber music ensemble. Stravinsky\u2019s work is a Faustian morality play in which a soldier returning home is tricked into trading his soul for power and possessions. There is no happy ending.<\/p>\n

Each Bach Festival culminates in a Sunday Leipzig service (named for Bach\u2019s primary job as cantor for the Leipzig churches, where duties included composing a new cantata weekly). This year\u2019s service was centered on the Pentecost story, with one of Bach\u2019s Pentecost cantatas (No. 34).<\/p>\n

In addition to the cantata, there was a Baroque concerto for two trumpets and strings as the prelude, two hymn accompaniments arranged by Eugene Friesen, organ music played by Marvin Mills<\/a>, and abundant congregational singing.<\/p>\n

Michael A. King<\/a>, dean of Eastern Mennonite Seminary<\/a>, delivered the homily. In response to King\u2019s suggestion that we ask forgiveness for our trespasses rather than debts. one attendee said King\u2019s words \u201cadded understanding to the Pentecost theme and closed the week with a power I was not expecting.\u201d<\/p>\n

The festival drew diverse participants, including high school students for an early-spring Young Artists\u2019 Concert and learners for both a Baroque Workshop and the \u201cRoads Scholar\u201d (formerly Elderhostel) program, which organizer Phyllis Coulter reported brought 14 this year from homeplaces as distant as California.<\/p>\n

Over the decades, Festival themes have paired Bach with such fellow-notables as Mozart and Mendelssohn, while connecting with Russian and Cuban traditions and American jazz and bluegrass. This season included music of Dvorak, including his beloved \u201cSymphony No. 9: From the New World.\u201d Next year\u2019s theme, \u201cDramatic Connections: Bach, and Some Britten and Verdi,\u201d will celebrate the anniversaries of Benjamin Britten\u2019s 100th birthday and Giuseppi Verdi\u2019s 200th.<\/p>\n

As to theme ideas for the future, Nafziger says \u201cI can\u2019t imagine ever running out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A German Bach specialist once observed that the music of Johann Sebastian Bach can be played successfully on modern or on period instruments, \u201cbut what you can\u2019t recreate is the ... read more about A Community Celebrates 20 Years of Bach<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":13105,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5624,5583,5623],"tags":[10613,13711],"feature":[],"class_list":["post-13096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bach-festival","category-campus-community","category-special-programs","tag-eugene-friesen","tag-ken-j-nafziger"],"yoast_head":"\nA Community Celebrates 20 Years of Bach - EMU News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2012\/a-community-celebrates-20-years-of-bach\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Community Celebrates 20 Years of Bach - 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