New all over again. The Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival, in what has become a tradition in itself, has once again changed format. Instead of filling just one spring weekend, New Inventions, the 2023-2024 Bach Festival, stretches into a trio of weekend events in fall, winter, and spring. (The first took place last fall, the final one will be April 12-14.)
The most recent series, New Invention, No. II, was presented January 26-28 at Baldwin Wallace University.
On Friday a program dubbed “Fire & Grace & Ash: Parita Americana” featured Edwin Huizinga (violin), William Coulter (guitar) and Ashley Hoyer (mandolin). It included a wide range of musical offerings — country-style fiddling, selections from Bach’s Double Violin Concerto, a charming composition by Hoyer, and other collaborative tunes — that engaged both performers and audience. The musical mix served as a reminder that southern country-style fiddlers came from somewhere and that somewhere might well have been from 18th-century immigrants from the British Isles and Europe.
On Saturday “Bach 52 in Concert” featured tenor Nicholas Phan and early music ensemble Les Délices playing arias and chamber music by Bach and Joachim Quantz. Phan’s web/podcast series, “Bach 52,” where he asks, “Is Bach’s music for everyone?” (the answer is, of course, why yes it is) explores the place of “old music” today. It can be found here.
On Sunday “Reich-n-Bach” displayed the repetitive nature of Steve Reich’s “Piano Phase” as well-played by Rob Kovacs (on two grand pianos at once), matched against Bach’s insistent cantata “Christ lag in Todes Banden,” BWV 4 (with members of BWV: Cleveland’s Bach Choir and a small chamber orchestra). Caitlin Hedge offered a pre-concert “musing” playing viola mixes of country and classical.
Also on the program: “Proverb,” a large Reich piece for singers, two keyboards and two vibraphones showed a welcome expansion from the initial “Piano Phase.”
But in the Reich/Bach match? Bach won. The Reich piece drove this reviewer to decipher the program cover’s backwards scribble instead of running out of the auditorium. The harshly modern mixed media by Preston Trombly, “Bach’s Invention,” circa 2022), has an intriguing attitude.
Bottom Line: A rewarding challenge and an educational weekend for classical music lovers.
Next up? The April 12-14 Bach Festival featuring the St. John Passion as well as contemporary groups, such as Acronym and the BW Beatles and the Festival Brass.