Celebrate Bach! The 18th Annual Northwest Bach Festival Is A Collecion Of Concerts, Classes And Lectures

Connoisseur Concerts is bringing Bach back with more brass than ever. The 18th annual Northwest Bach Festival features not only the voices and instruments usually associated with Johann Sebastian Bach’s music - instruments such as the organ and harpsichord - but trumpets, horns and trombones as well.

“Most people don’t know that Bach used the trombones fairly frequently in his cantatas,” says Gunther Schuller, the Bach Festival’s artistic director. “So I had the idea of beginning and ending a concert with the Brandenburg concertos that use trumpet and the horns and feature the trombones in Cantata No. 64 and a chorale from Cantata No. 23.”

That concert will be deep into the dozen concerts, recitals, lectures and master classes that make up this year’s Bach Festival. The series begins tonight with an organ recital by Stefan Kozinski at St. John’s Cathedral. Kozinski’s recital will include the music of early members of the Bach family along with works by Mendelssohn, Franck and Messiaen. The program will conclude with J.S. Bach’s famous Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor.

Kozinski is best-known locally for his ten-year tenure as the Spokane Symphony’s associate conductor and five years as artistic director of the Bach Festival. Since moving to New York City last year, he was appointed interim organist and choirmaster at the Advent Lutheran Church in Manhattan and serves as pianist and lecturer for the Metropolitan Opera’s Education Series.

Wednesday at The Met, flutist Michael Faust and harpsichordist Ilton Wjuniski will play six sonatas by J.S. Bach and his sons, Carl Philipp Emanuel and Johann Christoph Friedrich. “This is a concert is one I’m happy to finally be able to present here. I’ve wanted Michael and Ilton to do a duo concert here for several years. We’ve had them separately, but because of scheduling problems, it’s never happened that they could play together here before.”

Wjuniski is a former student of Huguette Dreyfus and Kenneth Gilbert, and he teaches at the Conservatoire Claude Debussy and at the Ecole Nationale de Musique in Bobigny. Faust studied with Karlheinz Zoeller and Aurele Nicolet. He has been a member of the Santa Cecilia Orchestra in Rome, the Hamburg Philharmonic, the Stuttgart Opera Orchestra and the Munich Phiharmonic. Faust is principal flutist with the Cologne Radio Orchestra.

The Jan. 12 performance at First Presbyterian Church is the brassy one. For the two Brandenburg concertos, the solo roster includes trumpet virtuoso David Hickman and hornist Richard Todd along with Faust, Wjuniski, oboist Allan Vogel, and Spokane Symphony concertmaster, Kelly Farris.

Hickman appeared in Spokane in 1988 as soloist with the Spokane Symphony. He studied with Armando Ghitalla and Maurice Andre and teaches at Arizona State University.

Todd is principal horn and horn soloist of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. He teaches at both the University of Southern California and the University of California at Los Angeles. Todd performed with the Spokane Symphony at the 1993 Festival at Sandpoint.

Vogel studied oboe with Robert Bloom and harpsichord with Ralph Kirkpatrick at Yale. He teaches at the California Institute of the Arts and at UCLA and he has appeared several times at the Northwest Bach Festival both as soloist and with the chamber ensemble The Musical Offering.

Farris recently celebrated his 25th season as concertmaster of the Spokane Symphony. A native of Walla Walla, Farris studied at the University of Washington with Emmanuel Zetlin and at Juilliard with Ivan Galamian, Dorothy Delay, Robert Mann and Felix Galimar. He teaches at Eastern Washington University where he is director of the University Symphony Orchestra.

The cantata in the Jan. 12 concert features soprano soloist Darnelle Preston, mezzo soprano JoAnne Bouma and bass-baritone John Frankhauser, all well-known in Spokane for recital and operatic performances. Bouma teaches at Gonzaga University, Preston is on the faculty at Whitworth College. Tamara Schupman, director of the Bach Chorus for the Jan. 12 concert, is also music director of the Spokane Area Children’s Chorus and has sung soprano roles in opera productions of the Spokane Symphony and with Uptown Opera.

For the Jan. 14 Festival finale, “Bach and His Contemporaries,” Schuller has scheduled Handel’s Oboe Concerto in G minor with Vogel as soloist and Farris performing a rarely-played violin concerto movement by Bach’s admired Italian contemporary, Francesco Bonporti. The concert opens with a suite assembled by Schuller made up of movements drawn from six suites by Georg Philipp Telemann and closes with Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 4.

Each of the Bach Festival concerts will be preceded by a pre-concert lecture by Verne Windham, music director of public radio station KPBX and former principal horn of the Spokane Symphony.

Eastern Washington University sponsors a series of free lectures and master classes by Bach Festival artists and EWW faculty. These Bach Festival events can also be taken for college credit though EWU. For information call 359-2241.

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MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: BACH FESTIVAL SCHEDULE Following is a schedule of events in the Northwest Bach Festival:

Tonight, Jan. 5 8 - “Organ Masterworks” recital by Stefan Kozinski, St. John’s Cathedral. Pre-concert lecture by Verne Windham, “The Organ: Center of a Musical Universe,” 7 p.m.

Monday, Jan. 8 Noon - Lecture-recital by the Michael Faust-Ilton Wjuniski Duo, Eastern Washington University Pence Union Building, room 263. 1 p.m. - Lecture by Ann LeBar, “Republics of Smoke and Music,” EWU Pence Union Building, room 263.

Tuesday, Jan. 9 4 p.m. - Lecture by Travis Rivers, “The Instruments Bach Used,” EWU Music Building Recital Hall, Cheney.

Wednesday, Jan. 10 2 p.m. - Master class by hornist Richard Todd, EWU Music Building Recital Hall. 8 p.m. - “Sonatas for Flute and Harpsichord,” recital by the Michael Faust-Ilton Wjuniski Duo, The Met. Pre-concert lecture by Verne Windham, “Note against Note: Musical and Human Relationships,” 7 p.m.

Thursday, Jan. 11 Noon - Master class by oboist Allan Vogel, EWU Music Building Recital Hall. 3 p.m. - Master class by Gunther Schuller with the EWU Orchestra, “Webern’s Symphony Op. 21,” EWU Music Building Recital Hall. 4 p.m. - Lecture by Kendall Feeney, “Chorales, Congregations and Cantatas,” EWU Music Building Recital Hall.

Friday, Jan. 12 Noon - Master class by trumpet player David Hickman, EWU Music Building Recital Hall. 8 p.m. - “Brandenburg Concertos I & II and Cantata No. 64,” vocal and instrumental soloists with the Bach Festival Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Gunther Schuller. First Presbyterian Church, 4th and Cedar. Pre-concert lecture by Verne Windham, “What Color is Music? Bright Baroque Brass, Of Course!”

Saturday, Jan. 13 10 a.m.-4 p.m. - “Harpsichord Happening,” piano students, their teachers and their parents encounter the harpsichord with Linda Siverts, Holy Names Music Center (call 326-9516).

Sunday, Jan. 14 3 p.m. - “Festival Finale: Bach and His Contemporaries,” soloists and the Bach Festival Orchestra, conducted by Gunther Schuller, St. John’s Cathedral. (Pre-concert lecture by Verne Windham, “A Whole Baroque World,” 2 p.m.)

Tickets - $15, $7 for students, available at G&B Select-a-Seat, 325-SEAT or (800) 325-SEAT.

Points to remember Seating for Bach Festival events is not reserved; arrive early for the best seats. The wooden pews at St. John’s Cathedral will seem very hard during the course of a concert; bring a cushion or a blanket to sit on.