By Lawrence Toppman
I’m trying to decide why the sixth annual Charlotte Bach Festival, running now through June 7, has been the most appealing to date.
Maybe that’s because Mozart, my favorite composer, bookends the festival in life – a May 30 screening of the Oscar-winning fable “Amadeus” – and death, via a performance of his Requiem next Saturday. Maybe that’s because the pieces this year span four centuries, from the early 1600s to our own time. Maybe – cover the ears of the easily shocked – that’s because it’s now possible to have multiple concerts with no Bach at all, either J.S. or any of his composer sons.
Or maybe it was the marimba.
On Monday night, Pius Cheung played his own adaptation of papa Bach’s Goldberg Variations on that instrument, using four mallets instead of 20 fingers. Acknowledgement to purists: He transposed some bass notes and did not observe all repeats, and (as he noted) he occasionally missed notes. But the effect exhilarated me. I have heard this piece played on piano, fortepiano and harpsichord, as well as arrangements for string trio, accordion, string orchestra and guitar.
Yet Cheung, playing from memory despite having seldom revisited the work since recording it in 2009, revealed new colors. The spooky, mournful, merry, solemn and often hypnotic sounds, almost always deeper than a piano’s, reverberated around 140-seat Tate Hall at CPCC.
The Canadian-Chinese composer followed that feat with an Asian-tinged excerpt from his percussion ballet “Heaven and Earth,” then an unidentified encore of subdued beauty: Lennon and McCartney’s “Blackbird.” (“Who wrote that?” asked one audience member. Classical fans need to get out more.)
Not counting the “Amadeus” screening, hosted by Bach Akademie keyboardist Ian Watson (who played on its soundtrack), the festival really kicked off Saturday night with a performance of all six Brandenburg Concertos.
That could have been a heavy meal, but co-artistic directors Guy Fishman and Aislinn Nosky cleverly arranged them in a different order to avoid audience fatigue. They started with two longer ones, Nos. 1 and 5 – Watson blitzed the titanic harpsichord cadenza in the latter – and finished with No. 4, where concertmaster Nosky blazed a path with virtuosic, fabulously ornamented solo playing.
Only one blot marred an otherwise successful evening: sour, muddy trumpet bleating in No. 2, right after intermission. Well, maybe a small second blot: The acoustics at Queens University’s Sandra Levine Theatre can be murky, and less assertive instruments such as the recorder were occasionally washed out. But it was a joy to hear the full six concertos unfold over two and a half hours.
The rest of my musical week so far has consisted of two recitals in churches. Organist Jerrick Cavagnaro raised the roof of St. John’s Baptist on Sunday, starting with his favorite piece of organ music – J.S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in F Major — and ending with Louis Vierne’s Symphony No. 2. (Vierne wrote six solo organ works he called symphonies, because of their construction.)
Cavagnaro was assistant director of music and organist at Christ Episcopal Church in Charlotte for three years before moving to Boston’s Trinity Church in 2023, and members of his local fan club turned out in force. I joined them after hearing the Bach, which he played with power and sensitivity.
I happened to sit where I could see his flying feet, as he braced his arms on the organ bench and played complicated bass runs with his pedal extremities. (Is that why it’s called a toe-cata?) Cavagnaro was equally at home in a reflective early Baroque work by Nicolas de Grigny, the playful pulsations of Bálint Karosi’s “Preludes and Fugues on B-A-C-H,” and an encore where he riffed through improvisations on an Easter hymn suggested by an audience member.
Fishman and Watson (now on organ) paired for viola da gamba and cello sonatas by J.S. Bach and two of his sons, Johann Christoph Friedrich and Carl Philipp Emanuel, at St. Mark’s Lutheran on Tuesday. The program was constructed so we could absorb pieces that increased in complexity, difficulty and more daring harmonies.
The middle allegro di molto movement of C.P.E.‘s sonata required the most virtuosic high-speed bowing, and Fishman’s brow-knit expression – he normally varies between serenity and a small grin – showed his concentration. Then, after a final calm arioso movement, the mood lightened.
The concert ended with a chamber orchestra and four singers coming together for J.S. Bach’s short, cheerful Cantata BWV 68, “For God so loved the world.” I can’t remember the last time I wanted to dance to a Bach cantata, but soprano Arwen Myers’ rendition of “My faithful heart, delight, sing, play,” made me want to do just that.
What’s ahead this week
7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Greenhoot Recital Hall at the Gambrell Center, Queens University: A recital ranging from Mozart to Benjamin Britten with tenor Gene Stenger, hornist Christopher Caudill and pianist Esther Jeehae Ahn.
Noon Thursday, Myers Park Presbyterian Church: Cantata BWV 61, “Now come, savior of the heathens,” in a free “Tuning In” concert that combines singing and analysis.
7:30 p.m. Thursday, St, Mark’s Lutheran: “Follia and Fantasy: The Art of the Trio Sonata,” with works by J.S. Bach and Vivaldi (mostly the latter).
Noon Friday, Myers Park Presbyterian: Another free “Tuning In” concert with Cantata BWV 10, “My soul magnifies the Lord.”
7:30 p.m. Friday, Myers Park Presbyterian: “Mozart at the Keyboard,” with pianists Ahn and Cristian Makhuli.
7:30 p.m. Saturday, Levine Theatre at the Gambrell Center: Haydn’s Violin Concerto No. 4 (with Nosky as soloist) and Mozart’s Requiem, with an orchestra and chorus totaling 34 musicians.