Bach for more

A glance at the program for the 28th Annual Northwest Bach Festival might leave some people puzzled.

The series, which begins Saturday, features four concerts of chamber music and ends with an organ recital and more chamber music.

Some Bach aficionados might ask: Where are the big baroque blockbusters?

“Some people might forget that we began the Bach Festival early this year,” says Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and conductor Gunther Schuller, who has been artistic director of the festival since 1993.

“We had always wanted to perform Handel’s ‘Messiah’ and the only time we could get the musicians we needed for that was to schedule it for December,” Schuller says from his home in Boston. “So the 2006 Bach Festival really began in December 2005 (at First Presbyterian Church) with our two performances of ‘Messiah’ –a baroque blockbuster if there ever was one.

“What I wanted to do with these concerts was to go beyond the blockbuster,” Schuller adds, “into some music that shows the not only the range of Bach’s own music, but the music that fed into his great genius – composers he would have known, or composers who created the instrumental styles of Bach’s time.

“And in many cases, the selections were made on the advice of the musicians I have performing at the festival this year.”

This year’s roster of performers includes several musicians who are familiar from past seasons’ Bach Festivals, some of them local musicians and some visitors.

Sunday’s opening concert includes works by J.S. Bach, his Italian contemporary Domenico Scarlatti, and two French contemporaries, Jean-Marie LeClair and Francois Couperin.

The performers are Spokane violinists Kelly Farris and Misha Rosenker, along with Seattle-based viola da gambist Margriet Tindemans and harpsichordist Mark Kroll from Boston.

Farris, concertmaster of the Spokane Symphony, has performed in the Bach Festival for almost all of its 28 seasons. Rosenker, who joined the Eastern Washington University music faculty last fall, is performing for the first time at this year’s festival.

“I had known Misha when I taught conducting at the Brevard Festival,” Schuller says. “But in a sense, I’ve known him much longer because his father was associate concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic at the same time my father played in the orchestra, and he was one of my father’s closest friends.

“Misha is a terrific young player and we’re very lucky to have him here.”

Tindemans has performed with several of the world’s best-known early music ensembles such as Sequentia, the Huelgas Ensemble and The King’s Noyse. She first played at the Northwest Bach Festival in the 1995 performance of the St. Matthew Passion and has returned several times since then.

Born in the Netherlands, Tindemans directs the Medieval Women’s Choir in Seattle and performs in other early music groups.

Kroll, a noted harpsichordist, fortepianist, conductor and author, joined the Bach Festival last season. Harpsichordist for the Boston Symphony since 1979, he is professor emeritus of music at Boston University and has published books on harpsichord performance and on the performance of Beethoven’s sonatas for violin and piano.

The festival’s second concert on Tuesday will feature Kroll and Tindemans along with violinist Tracy Dunlop and cellist John Marshall.

Dunlop, assistant concertmaster of the Spokane Symphony, has been a member of the Spokane String Quartet and has performed in the Spokane-Coeur d’Alene Opera orchestra and with other ensembles in the region. During summers she is a member of the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra in Wyoming.

Marshall is principal cellist of the Spokane Symphony and a member of the music faculty at Eastern Washington University. He was cellist with the Spokane String Quartet from 1994 to 2000.

Before moving to Spokane, Marshall performed in the Schleswig-Holstein Festival in Germany and later was on the faculty of the Interlochen Academy.

Music for Tuesday’s concert includes three major works by Bach for string soloists with harpsichord, along with a cello sonata by Alessandro Marcello. Also on the program is J.S. Bach’s only openly descriptive harpsichord work, from his teenage years, called “Capriccio on the Departure of My Dearest Brother.”

In addition to the festival concerts, the opening week will include three educational events: a lecture on “Bach’s Inspirational Legacy” by EWU musicologist Morten Kristiansen on Tuesday, a master class for string with Tindemans on Wednesday, and a composers’ colloquium with Schuller on Thursday. These events at Eastern Washington University are open to the public free of charge and without registration.

The festival will continue with works for harpsichord, cello and gamba at the Davenport on Feb. 3; a free performance of “Music of the Bach Family” for soprano, viola da gamba and harpsichord at Mary Queen Catholic Church on Feb. 5; and an organ recital by James David Christie at St. Augustine Catholic Church on Feb. 11.