Bach's Musical World

The sounds of “Bach’s Musical World” will reverberate throughout the 50th annual Bach Week Festival's free chamber music concert on period instruments at 6 p.m. Sunday, April 30, at All Saints’ Episcopal Church, 4550 N. Hermitage Avenue, in Chicago’s Ravenswood neighborhood. Curated by early music specialist Jason J. Moy, Bach Week’s principal organist and harpsichordist, the hour-long program “features works by some of Bach’s most influential forebears as well as some of his direct contemporaries and other composers whose works he knew and deeply admired,” Moy says. Works on the program include Dieterich Buxtehude’s Trio Sonata in A Minor, Op. 1, No. 3, BuxWV 254; and two of George Frideric Handel’s German arias, “Singe, Seele Gott zum Preise,” (Soul, sing praises to God), HWV 206; and “Meine Seele hört im Sehen” (My soul hears by sight), HWV 207. Also: Two excerpts from François Couperin’s “Pièces de Clavecin,” Livre II, “La Ménetou” and “Les Baricades Mistérieuses” (The Mysterious Barricades); Antonio Vivaldi’s intimate solo cantata “Amor hai vinto” (Love has won), RV 651; and Buxtehude’s Trio Sonata in A Major, Op. 2, No. 5, BuxWV 263. The program concludes with a nod to Bach Week’s golden 50th season: the aria from Bach’s “Goldberg Variations,” BWV 988, performed on the rarely heard archlute. Artists include Hannah De Priest, soprano; Adriane Post, Baroque violin; Anna Steinhoff, viola da gamba; Brandon Acker, archlute; and Moy on harpsichord. All are among the top rank of Chicago’s period-instrument musicians. De Priest, Post, and Acker are making their Bach Week debuts. Moy is artistic director of Ars Musica Chicago and a faculty member at the Mead Witter School of Music at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, and at DePaul University School of Music, where he is the inaugural recipient of the Monsignor Kenneth J. Velo Endowed Distinguished Professorship. The event is funded through a generous donation from Margaret and Bob McCamant. The concert is free and open to the public, but reservations are required because seating is limited.