By and large most modern symphony orchestras these days tend to perform repertoire from the Romantic era of classical music to the present day. Perhaps they believe Baroque music, with its more intimate sound, isn’t as well-suited to a 70-plus piece ensemble.
Jeffrey Kahane, the music director of the San Antonio Philharmonic, feels otherwise, and he’s doing something about it this week.
“There are over 1,000 works in Bach’s catalog,” Kahane says, “and of those, there are probably a dozen that are familiar to symphonic audiences. There’s a vast amount of music about which most audiences never encounter. [But] there’s absolutely no reason why a group of musicians in a modern symphony orchestra cannot play a stunningly good performance of Bach.”
This week, the San Antonio Philharmonic will be doing just that as they team up with the San Antonio Chamber Choir and the Children’s Chorus of San Antonio to perform Bach’s “Easter Oratorio,” on Friday at the Basilica of the Little Flower Shrine, and on Saturday at Our Lady of the Lake University’s Sacred Heart Chapel. Both shows take place at 7:30 p.m.
Bach’s music will be paired with that of Mexican composer Manuel de Zumaya who Kahane says was “an exact contemporary of Bach, in Mexico City.” Zumaya’s choral music, he says, “has a wonderful text in Spanish, very charming and joyous.”
Finally, Kahane will perform solo at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday at Our Lady of the Lake, Bach’s “Goldberg Variations,” a lengthy work that Kahane calls “one of the summits of keyboard literature.”
The “Goldberg Variations,” Kahane explains, are a set of variations on a bass line that provide “a sonic panorama of keyboard styles” of his time.
Kahane’s performance will be preceded by a short talk where he’ll demonstrate from the keyboard the ins and outs of Bach’s music.
Details on all three concerts are at saphil.org.
To hear a preview of the program, use the audio player at the top of this page.
