The 21st Northwest Bach Festival came to a glorious close Sunday afternoon at First Presbyterian Church. The program included two masterfully performed church cantatas and two delightful concertos -- one by J.S. Bach, and the other by his son, Carl Philipp Emanuel.

Gunther Schuller, the afternoon’s conductor and artistic director of the festival, always seems to work miracles with any music, from ragtime to the most complex modern scores. But Schuller clearly loves Bach’s music most deeply of all, and he brings the lilt of the dance and a sprightly singing quality to his performances of Bach. Schuller knows the older, romantic style of Bach performance and the more recent efforts to return to “historically accurate” Bach style. His Bach performances accomplish what, to my ears at least, is a wonderfully convincing fusion of the two -- the romantics’ heartfelt fervor without its heaviness, and moderns’ transparency and lightness without choppiness.

The dancing quality was very apparent from the first moments in the Concerto in F minor, which began Sunday’s concert. Harpsichord soloist Ilton Wjuniski proved he could make the harpsichord dance and sing. He turned the second-movement largo into an ardent serenade.

After intermission, Wjuniski and pianist Linda Siverts captured the wit and sweetness of C.P.E. Bach's Concerto for Piano and Harpsichord despite a moment of confusion in the first movement caused by a delayed harpsichord entrance.

The two cantatas performed Sunday were comparative rarities -- Cantata No. 148, “Bringt dem Herrn Ehre seines Namens,” and Cantata No. 149, “Man singet mit Freuden von Sieg.” The Bach Chorus, trained by Tamara Schupman, did fine work, singing with real Bachian spirit. All the soloists -- soprano Darnell Preston, alto JoAnne Bouma, tenor Fritz Robertson and bass Robert Honeysucker -- were quite impressive.

Just to cite examples for Cantata No. 149: I was struck by the intensity of Bouma’s “Mund und Herz steht mir offen” with its colorful accompaniment of oboes and bassoon and by hers and Robertson’s duet, “Seid wachsam, ihr heiliger Wachter” with Barbara Novak’s jaunty bassoon obbligato.

Honeysucker was able to bring weight to “Kraft und Starke” without ever becoming ponderous. And Preston provided an appropriate angelic brightness to “Gottes Engel weichen nie.”

What Bach does with the union of words and music is astounding. Unfortunately the English translations of cantata texts printed in the program were not poetic enough to be readable nor literal enough to be helpful. Worse yet, the program gave a completely different set of words for the final chorale of Cantata 148 than those sung.

Sunday’s performance was the last of four concerts that made up the most visible part of the Bach Festival iceberg. There were more than 30 events connected with the festival. The festival’s visiting artists and their local cohorts visited public schools and presented lectures, master classes, demonstrations, and concerts with commentary at Eastern Washington University and here in the city. This is the kind of annual event that truly lives up to the name “festival.”

By Travis Rivers

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This article is reprinted with the permission of the author and The Spokesman-Review.

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