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Community Corner

41st Annual Bach Week Festival: Keyboard Concertos and Cantata


Evanston's 41st annual Bach Week Festival gets underway with a back-by-popular-demand appearance by pianist Sergei Babayan, an artist in residence at the Cleveland Institute of Music. At his festival debut in 2013, the charismatic Russian-trained Armenian-born pianist impressed audiences, critics, and fellow musicians with his bracing and sensitively nuanced playing.

The pianist and the orchestra will perform three of Bach’s keyboard concertos, the Concerto in A Major, BWV 1055; and two that are new to Bach Week: the Concerto in D Major, BWV 1054; and Concerto in G Minor, BWV 1058.

New York Times critic Allan Kozinn noted Babayan's "extraordinary technique" and "his ability to play densely harmonized works with an illuminating transparency." When Babayan played a modern Steinway grand in Mozart's Piano Concert No. 24 with Cleveland period-instrument ensemble Apollo's Fire, Plain Dealer music critic Donald Rosenberg marveled at the "glorious results." The pianist "scaled his playing to complement the orchestra's lean elegance,"Rosenberg wrote. "Babayan paid keen attention to Mozart's dramatic needs, shaping phrases with urgent or tender subtlety and gauging dynamics to heighten the music's changing qualities."

Babayan is teacher and mentor to the prize-winnning young Russian piano phenomenon Daniil Trifonov, whose performances have attracted sold-out crowds and critical acclaim across the country. Trifonov chose to attend the Cleveland Institute of Music expressly to study with Babayan.

Tenor William Watson, an internationally noted Bach interpreter, will be soloist with the Bach Week Festival Chorus and Orchestra in Bach’s sacred Cantata “Ich armer Mensch, ich Sündenknecht” (I pitiful man, I slave to sin), BWV 55, a reflection on man's sinfulness and God's mercy.

Watson has sung major Bach roles with Music of the Baroque, Bach Society of St. Louis, Oratorio Society of New York (Carnegie Hall), and the Noord Nederland Orkest (Holland). Other concert appearances include the Carmel Bach Festival and Boston Baroque, as well as the Chicago Symphony with Sir Georg Solti conducting, the St. Louis Symphony with Leonard Slatkin, the Rochester Philharmonic with Mark Elder, the Milwaukee Symphony with Lukas Foss, and the Montreal Symphony with Charles Dutoit. He can be heard on the London Records "St. Matthew Passion," BWV 244, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Georg Solti.

Conductor will be Richard Webster, who performed at the first Bach Week in 1974 and has been festival music director since 1975.

Tickets and Information

Single tickets to the concert are $30 for adults, $20 for seniors, and $10 for students with ID. Tickets are available at www.bachweek.org or by calling 800-838-3006.

Bach Week is one of the Midwest’s premiere Baroque music festivals. The event enlists musicians from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Lyric Opera of Chicago Orchestra, and other top-tier ensembles, while featuring some of the Chicago area’s finest instrumental and vocal soloists and distinguished guest artists from out of town.

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