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WASHINGTON BACH CONSORT CELEBRATES 35 YEARS
J. R EILLY LEWIS PRESENTS A SIX-CONCERT SEASON INCLUDING THE B MINOR MASS
SOPRANO SUPERSTAR ELIZABETH FUTRAL SOLOS IN THE VIRTUOSO BACH
PREE NOONTIME CANTATA SERIES RETURNS TO CHURCH OF THE EPIPHANY
Washington, D.C.—
The Washington Bach Consort, "one of America's finest ensembles"
(
Washington Post), is pleased to announce its thirty-fifth Anniversary Season presenting an
expanded six -concert subscription series at National Presbyterian Church in Washington DC's
Tenleytown neighborhood and six free Noontime Cantatas downtown, as well as an expanded
series of its highly popular education program,
Bach in Time.
Music Director/Founder J. Reilly Lewis directs the Consort's acclaimed professional chorus and
orchestra, Concertmaster Andrew Fouts, performing on period instruments in a brilliant selection
of music by JS Bach and his contemporaries. A six-concert 35th Anniversary 2012-2013 season
places Bach in context among his contemporaries and includes both secular and sacred music,
including the monumental summing-up of his life, the Mass in B Minor featuring Soprano Agnes
Zgigovics. The solo artistry of the orchestra and of J. Reilly Lewis himself as organist is featured. In
addition to crowd-pleasing favorites such as a Christmas concert and selections from Bach’s
Brandenburg Concertos, the Consort introduces lesser-known works of the Baroque.
Elizabeth Futral joins the Consort in
The Virtuoso Bach performing two of Bach’s most brilliant
Cantatas for solo soprano. Futral, who is renowned for her mastery of vocal styles from grand
opera to Baroque, most recently appeared
in a 13-performance run of The Music Man at the
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Glimmerglass Festival, Cooperstown, NY, and in Manhattan, where she performed Kaija Saariaho’s
operatic monodrama
Émilie as part of the Lincoln Center Festival. The New York Times described her
Émilie
as a “vocally luminous, emotionally vulnerable and brilliant performance.” Elizabeth Futral
performed with the Washington Bach Consort in 2006 in
Happy Birthday, Bach! - A Bach/Burana
Blowout
at the Kennedy Center, and The Ethereal Elizabeth Futral in 2007 at Schlesinger Concert
Hall. Her 2009 recording with the Washington Bach Consort in
Solo Cantatas received rave
reviews: “The lovely Elizabeth Futral sings beautifully and clearly, with a delightfully crystalline
quality. Mr. Lewis and his Washington Bach Consort prove to be able partners…”
(American Record
Guide)
; “…Futral has a warm, colorful voice that's at its best in the music's broadly lyrical passages,
and in the recitatives, which she brings excitingly to life with supple expressiveness … J. Reilly
Lewis leads the Washington Bach Consort, a period instrument ensemble, in bright, lively
performances… Each of the cantatas includes at least one obbligato instrument, and the soloists
play admirably. The sound is clean and bright, with a good sense of presence.”
(All Music Guide).
Each subscription concert will be preceded by a lecture “Talking Bach” given by a noted Bach
scholar one hour before the performance at National Presbyterian Church. The lectures focus not
only on the musical elements of the work that will be performed, but also on the historical context
in which the music was created. Talks are designed to enhance the concertgoers’ appreciation and
enjoyment of the music they are about to hear. The series is open to all ticket holders. There will
be a brief, informal reception with refreshments following each of the six performances.
In addition to the subscription concerts, the popular
Noontime Cantata Series returns with six
free-of-charge performances at the newly-renovated Church of the Epiphany, located at 13th & G
Streets, NW, Washington, DC, just across the street from the Metro Center metro stop. The Consort
will perform at noon on the first Tuesday of October, November, December, March, April, and May.
The fifty-minute concerts include a brief introduction by Music Director J. Reilly Lewis, a work for
solo organ, and one of J.S. Bach’s Cantatas with chorus, soloists and orchestra.
In October 2012 and May 2013 at the Sitar Arts Center (Adams Morgan) and for the first time at
the THEARC (East of the Anacostia,) the Consort’s
Bach in Time education program focuses on
introducing young audiences to Bach. The current target audience for
Bach in Time is 2nd to 4th
grade students in the Washington, DC public school system. The education program was retooled
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and re-launched November 2009 and due to its immediate popularity, the Consort added
additional time slots to accommodate the many DC Public Schools interested in the program.
Washington Bach Consort 2012-2013 Season
Subscription Series
National Presbyterian Church
4101 Nebraska Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20016
KINGS AND COMMONERS
Sunday, September 23, 2012 at 3 pm
John Blow: God spake sometime in visions
William Boyce: The king shall rejoice
George Frideric Handel: My heart is inditing
Orlando Gibbons:
Te Deum (The Second Service)
Johann Sebastian Bach: Election Cantata:
Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele, BWV 69
With the beginning of our 35
th anniversary season coinciding with an electoral race, we take a look
at music commissioned for state occasions. Handel’s anthem was written for the coronation of
George II in 1727, when the
Te Deum by Orlando Gibbons, who served kings of England over a
century before, may also have been performed. Blow and Boyce wrote for James II and George III
respectively, but it takes the genius of Bach to bestow grandeur fit for royalty on the inauguration
of a town council.
THE VIRTUOSO BACH
Sunday, November 4, 2012 at 3 pm
Johann Sebastian Bach
Brandenburg Concerto II, BWV 1047
Cantata:
Ich habe genug, BWV 82
Sinfonia from Cantata 49
Triple Concerto, BWV 1044
Cantata:
Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen, BWV 51
Bach famously wrote that
music is an agreeable harmony for the honor of God and the permissible
delights of the soul.
Allow your soul an afternoon of delight with an all-Bach program featuring
some of the master’s most virtuosic and challenging writing for solo singers and instrumentalists.
Concertmaster Andrew Fouts and guest soprano Elizabeth Futral, who performs two of Bach’s
most brilliant Cantatas for solo soprano, join other supurb performers in this showcase of musical
treasures.
GREAT GLAD TIDINGS
Saturday
, December 1, 2012 at 5 pm (note day and time)
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Johann Sebastian Bach
Cantata:
Schwingt freudig euch empor, BWV 36
Cantata:
Selig ist der Mann (Dialogus), BWV 57
Canonic Variations on
Vom Himmel hoch, BWV 769
Cantata:
Ehre sei dir, Gott, gesumgen, BWV 248
An all-Bach program contains cantatas composed for Advent and the Christmas season, including
one of the six that make up the Christmas Oratorio. J. Reilly Lewis performs the Canonic Variations
on
Von Himmel hoch, one of Bach’s most famous compositions published towards the end of his
life.
BACH FOR ALL SEASONS
Sunday, February 17, 2013 at 3 pm
In honor of the 35
th Season and by popular demand music director and founder J. Reilly Lewis and
National Presbyterian’s glorious Skinner organ star in an all-Bach program built around the “Great
Eighteen,” BWV 651–658, begun in Bach’s youth in Weimar and revised in his final years in
Leipzig. One of the most famous and diverse collection of organ pieces Bach ever wrote, these
brilliant compositions represent a perfect fusion of styles and genres raised to new and
unimagined artistic heights. Singers from the Consort chorus perform Bach’s exquisite
harmonization’s of the various melodies upon which these keyboard masterpieces are based.
HONOR AND REMEMBRANCE
Sunday, March 10, 2013 at 3 pm
National Presbyterian Church, Washington, DC
Johann Sebastian Bach Motet:
Der Gerechte kommt um
Johann Sebastian Bach Brandenburg Concerto VI, BWV 1051
Heinrich Schütz Musikalische
Exequien, SWV 279
Johann Sebastian Bach Funeral Ode:
Laß, Fürstin, laß noch einen Strahl, BWV 198
Rich sonority, sublime harmony, and complex instrumentation characterize this program that
includes a deeply-felt funeral ode written to honor a beloved queen, and Schütz’s
Exequien, a
tribute to a friend and patron and one of the major works of the German choral repertoire before
Bach. Bach himself looks back to the past with his arrangement of a motet originally attributed to
his colleague Kuhnau, and the mood of reflection is carried over in the most introspective and
somberly beautiful of the Brandenburg concertos.
THE B MINOR MASS
Sunday, April 28, 2013 at 3 pm
Johann Sebastian Bach Mass in B Minor, BWV 232
We end our 35
th Season with the monumental Mass in B Minor, a work Bach returned to again and
again during his life. Although it draws upon Lutheran and Catholic traditions the B Minor Mass
holds deep significance for people of all religious and cultural origins. Bach scholar Christoph
Wolff describes the B Minor Mass as “…a summary of his writing for voice, not only in its variety of
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styles, compositional devices, and range of sonorities, but also in its high level of technical polish ...
Bach’s mighty setting preserved the musical and artistic creed of its creator for posterity.”
Noontime Cantata Series
Church of the Epiphany
1317 G Street, NW
Washington, DC 20005
October 2, 2012
Cantata:
O heilges Geist und Wasserbad, BWV 165
Organ: Prelude and Fugue in E-Flat Major, BWV 552
Soloist:
J. Reilly Lewis
November 6, 2012
Cantata:
Wir danken dir, Gott, BWV 29
Organ: Fantasia and Fugue in G Minor, BWV 542
Soloist:
Jeremy Filsell
December 4, 2012
Cantata:
Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, BWV 62
Organ: Canonic Variations on
Vom Himmel hoch, BWV 769
Soloist:
Todd Fickley
March 5, 2013
Cantata:
Herr, gehe nicht ins Gericht, BWV 105
Organ: Prelude and Fugue in A Minor, BWV 543
Soloist:
Paul Skevington
April 2, 2013
Cantata:
Bleib bei uns, denn es will Abend werden, BWV 6
Organ: Toccata and Fugue in F Major, BWV 540
Soloist:
Eric Plutz
May 7, 2013
Cantata:
Wer da gläubet und getauft wird, BWV 37
Organ: Prelude and Fugue in G Major, BWV 541
Soloist:
William Neil
About the Washington Bach Consort
Founded in 1977 by its Music Director, J. Reilly Lewis, the Washington Bach Consort is a professional
chorus and orchestra noted for its performance of 18
th-Century music on period instruments. Its mission
is to perform to the highest artistic standards the music of J.S. Bach and his Baroque contemporaries.
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As one of the nations’ critically acclaimed and widely recognized performing arts institutions, it has
appeared at numerous festivals and has made three European tours. Recordings include Bach’s complete
motets, both J.S. and C.P.E. Bach’s
Magnificats, the first American recording of the F Major and G
Minor Masses
, and a recording of the solo soprano cantatas featuring opera superstar Elizabeth Futral.
Washington Bach Consort founder and Music Director J. Reilly Lewis is recognized internationally as
an accomplished conductor and keyboard artist, as well as a leading specialist of Baroque music,
particularly the music of J.S. Bach.
Subscriptions and Single Tickets
Subscriptions and single tickets to the Washington Bach Consort’s 2012-2013 season are on sale
now.
Tickets range from $23 -$65, Students 18 and under pay $10, “Pay Your Age” tickets
are offered to those 18 to 38 years of age.
For more information, contact the Consort at
202.429.2121 or visit
www.bachconsort.org.
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More Information
Janey Moskowitz
Washington Bach Consort
1010 Vermont Avenue, NW
Suite 202
Washington, DC 20005
202.429.2121
www.bachconsort.org |