Bach, Handel help symphony cap its Met series

Most classical music listeners think of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frederic Handel as the twin superstars of baroque music.

They were born within a few weeks of each other in the same area of east central Germany. They started their careers educated in the same traditions.

“But very soon they went very separate ways,” says Eckart Preu, the Spokane Symphony’s music director, who was born in the same region of Germany.

Preu will conduct music by Bach and Handel in the symphony’s season-ending Met series concerts Sunday and Tuesday.

He has chosen selections from Handel’s “Water Music” Suite, along with Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 and his Sinfonia in D major. Violists Nicholas Carper and Jeanette Wee-Yang will be soloists for the Bach concerto

“I thought it would be good to have our Met audience have a chance to hear Bach and Handel back-to-back,” Preu says, “to see what the differences between them really are.”

Preu has selected Bach’s Sinfonia in D major as the program’s opener.

“Nobody really knows where this single-movement piece comes from or why Bach wrote it,” he says. “Was it the beginning of a violin concerto? Was it meant as the opening for a church cantata? No one seems to know.

“I found it when I was listening to a huge collection of Bach CDs a few years ago, and it just stuck out among the among things I heard.”

Kelly Farris, the symphony’s concertmaster who will retire at the end of this season, will perform the violin solo part of the Sinfonia.

The six concertos Bach dedicated to the Duke of Brandenburg (the composer was hoping for a job in Berlin, where the duke lived) are among his most often-played works.

Each of the six concertos features a different combination of soloists and accompanying ensembles. The sixth concerto features two viola soloists and a string orchestra that includes no violins and no violas.

“The thought behind choosing the sixth Brandenburg was, with Nick and Jeanette we have this great first stand of violas in our orchestra,” Preu says. “Since I like using the concerts at The Met to showcase our musicians as soloists, this was the perfect match.”

Carper was born in Spokane and received his musical education at Butler University in Indianapolis. Wee-Yang grew up in Vancouver, B.C., and studied at the University of British Columbia and Indiana University. Carper joined the orchestra as principal violist in 2001 and Wee-Yang as assistant principal in 2003.

Preu will end the concerts with 10 movements selected from first and third suites of Handel’s “Water Music.” Legend has it that Handel wrote the piece for a royal boating party to get in the good graces of England’s George I in 1715.

“But the real story behind Handel’s ‘Water Music’ is something of a mystery,” Preu says. “There is only one later royal cruise accompanied by Handel’s music that is really documented. So where all these 20 movements came from and how they were put together in the three suites are things that nobody seems to be able to explain.”

Preu will introduce the music at each performance with spoken program notes and musical examples played by the orchestra.