Best of the Bach - Highlights of this year's fest

By Brett Campbell of the Eugene Weekly.

Each year, the Oregon Bach Festival gets a lot of attention for its big productions, and this year's no exception: Brahms' German Requiem, Handel's oratorio, Jephtha, Beethoven's piano concertos, along with an unusual and attractive dance concert, highlight the schedule at the Hult Center's Silva Hall.

But for alternative types such as you folks reading this, why not try an alternative — and to my ears, superior — venue and musical menu?

The UO's Beall Concert Hall hosts a half dozen smaller-scale shows that pack at least as much musical muscle as the big whoppers at the Incredible Hult. With no major contemporary works on the bill, this may be the summer to sample some of those more intimate pleasures as well as the mega productions.

Friday, June 27, 8 pm
Handel Jephtha (Silva Concert Hall, Hult Center)

We haven't heard enough from that other titan of the Baroque, George Frederic Handel, at the Bach Festival lately. While Bach often gazed inward or heavenward, Handel was a man of theater, and wrote extroverted, crowd-pleasing music often in the grand manner. Jephtha was the last of his great series of oratorios — almost operatic settings of Biblical stories, replete with grand choruses, dramatic soloists, and small orchestra — and one of his last important works.

This one sets the story of the Israelites' battle against the Ammonites, and throws in some added characters and plot devices. If you like the Handel oratorio everyone has heard — Messiah — give this one a try.

Saturday, June 28, 8 pm
Paul O' Dette, lutenist (Beall Concert Hall, UO School of Music)

For a change from the large-scale grandeur of Handel, try this quietly intense recital of Elizabethan music performed by perhaps the greatest living lutenist, Paul O'Dette (accompanied in some songs by counter tenor Matthew White), in the ideal intimate setting of the UO's Beall Concert Hall. Just as Bob Dylan, accompanied solely by his acoustic guitar, can pack more emotional punch than an army of heavy metal electric guitarists, this music of William Byrd, Henry Purcell, and other English and Italian composers can, in its own stark way, feel as powerful as massive Baroque passions or oratorios. If you like solo acoustic guitar (jazz or folk), give this one a listen.

Sunday, June 29, 4 pm
Bach Brandenburg Concertos (Silva)

The best of Bach, the Baroque, and maybe even classical music, the Brandenburg Concertos are perhaps the most widely accessible yet critically lauded staples of the repertoire, so tuneful and creative that — unlike certain other popular Baroque tunes — they deserve a lifetime of repeated listenings. This is the ideal concert for the classical music novice or someone looking for just one Bach Festival concert of guaranteed delight.

Monday, June 30, 8 pm
Lorna McGhee and Friends (Beall)

The French may be cheese-eating surrender monkeys — or they may be skeptical about one country unilaterally attacking another, killing civilians and ultimately making terrorism more likely. Uh, where was I? Oh, oui, the French. Whatever you think about their politics, French composers wrote some of the most beautiful music of the early 20th century, especially Claude Debussy's ravishing 1915 "Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp," some of the finest chamber music ever composed. Its characteristically French elegance harkens back to at least the music of the 17th century, when Marin Marais composed three pieces for the same forces, also performed at this concert.

Maurice Ravel looked back to French composers of that period when he composed a number of his finest works, including the "Sonatine" for piano, later arranged for flute, harp and viola. Later, even the more experimental French composer Andre Jolivet couldn't resist this combination's lyrical pull, and this concert presents his "Petite Suite." Performed by top-notch soloists, this should be one of the loveliest concerts of the summer, and a prime recommendation for this festival.

Thursday, July 3, 8 pm
Beethoven Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 5 (Silva)
Jeffrey Kahane, soloist and conductor

This has been the year of Beethoven in Eugene. Our symphony has embarked on a complete cycle of his symphonies; the Oregon Mozart Players did the triple concerto last month, and now Jeffrey Kahane will play all five of his piano concertos, second only to the symphonies among Beethoven's orchestral music. The somewhat tentative first (confusingly called Number 2) concerto owes a lot to his teacher, Haydn; the second evokes Mozart but already shows signs of moving beyond the Classical style, while the dramatic third uses Mozart's late concertos as a launching pad into new harmonic dimensions, signaling the arrival of Romanticism.

The quietly but consistently surprising fourth concerto culminates in a movement of exultant joy. His monumental final piano concerto is one of the most popular ever written, symphonic in its proportions and ambitions. It's one of the pillars of classical music, so maybe the July 3 concert is the one to choose if you can see only one of these.

Wednesday, July 2, 8 pm
Tenor James Taylor, vocal recital (Beall)

That other James Taylor's Cuthbert show may be sold out, but this one looks a lot more interesting anyway. An award-winning tenor, Taylor has won plenty of praise in his previous Bach Festival performances, and he's performing in several concerts again this time. OFAM fans should love this survey of American art songs from Charles Ives (the first great American composer) and John Jacob Niles (who collected and set folk songs from his native Appalachia as well as composing his own) through Samuel Barber's and John Duke's settings of poems from James Joyce, A.E. Houseman and others.

Contemporary composers are represented by Dominick Argento, who sets Shakespeare and his contemporaries' verse to modern sounds, and Jake Heggie, who recently turned Dead Man Walking into a popular opera, who gives a musical backdrop to Emily Dickinson's poems.

Saturday, July 5, 8 pm
Robert Levin and Ya-Fei Chuang, 
duo piano recital (Beall)

Any new work by one of America's finest composers, John Harbison, is worth hearing, and pianist Robert Levin (who made his name as a Baroque and Classical scholar and performer) and his wife, award-winning pianist Ya Fei Chuang, will play Harbison's second piano sonata, which premiered earlier this year.

The show also includes "La Valse," Ravel's deconstruction of waltz music (metaphorically evoking the first world war's destruction of the old order that spawned the high society waltzes) and Romantic works by Chopin and Rachmaninoff.

Sunday, July 6, 4 pm
Berg Violin Concerto, 
Brahms German Requiem (Silva)

It's strange to hear the words "atonal" and "beautiful" in the same sentence, but Alban Berg's haunting 1935 Violin Concerto manages to be that rare 12-tone work that genuinely touches listeners' emotions. Berg was a student of Arnold Schoenberg, who originated atonality but never forced his students to follow his path or rigid rules. This masterpiece, which even quotes Bach, moves fluently from placidity to anguish to melancholy serenity.

Berg's great concerto was intended as a requiem for a friend's child (Manon Gropius) and wound up being a requiem for the composer, who died shortly after writing it and before it could be performed.

Johannes Brahms' popular (if turgid) German Requiem offers secular solace for those who are left behind when their loved ones die; it's been in the air a lot since Sept. 11, 2001 and was also performed at the opening of the Hult Center 20 years ago.

Monday, July 7, 8 pm
Festival Baroque Ensemble (Beall)

No matter how well performed the Baroque music at the Oregon Bach Festival, almost none of it really follows its composers' intentions, because the OBF still clings to the outmoded use of modern instruments and tunings to perform music that was written for instruments quite different from today's descendants. It may be understandable to use the more powerful modern versions to project enough sound to carry through the cavernous Silva Hall (much larger than the venues this music was written for), but Beall Hall offers an ideal venue for the leaner, more transparent sounds of period instruments.

It's a shame the Bach Festival offers only one concert on period instruments — this one features violin, cello, and harpsichord — particularly given the early music experts on the UO music faculty. But this year's looks like a dandy, combining the familiar (one of Bach's harpsichord toccatas and a sonata for violin and harpsichord) with the more obscure (Uccelini, Castello) and the better known (Frescobaldi, Domenico Gabrieli, Biber) earlier Baroque composers.

Wednesday, July 9, 8 pm
"The Tao of the Well-Tempered Bach"
Al Huang, Robert Levin (Soreng)

This show sold out last year, and probably will this time, too, as pianist Levin and Tai Ji master Al Huang explore Bach's keyboard masterpiece, The Well Tempered Clavier.

Friday, July 11, 8 pm
Bach and Ballet
Eugene Ballet, Festival Chamber Orchestra (Silva)

Bach's other concertos are every bit as compelling as the Brandenburgs, and the Concerto for Oboe and Violin in C Minor is one of the most powerful ever written, the wistfulness of its pastoral second movement giving way to the taut drama of its punchy final movement.

The Orchestral Suites are more playful, as befits a series of dances, and the two performed on this concert feature flute and other wind instruments. All the music in this show is among Bach's best and most familiar. See accompanying story, "Bach and Ballet," for more on the music of this concert.

Sunday, July 13, 4 pm
Bach Magnificat Mozart C Minor Mass (Silva)

Most listeners know the poignant story of Mozart's unfinished Requiem, but it's not the only magnificent piece of sacred music he left incomplete. Even truncated, his Mass in C Minor is one of the great sacred works of the Classical era, and will certainly appeal to fans of Bach and Beethoven's efforts in this form. Bach's exultant Magnificat remains one of his most popular pieces and one of the finest for chorus and orchestra — a happy climax to this year's festival.