GREAT BARRINGTON — Live choral music in the Berkshires took a hit during the pandemic. Holiday concerts were canceled two years in a row. Local choirs were forced to curtail even their rehearsal activities. But at 4 p.m. Saturday, May 14, the Berkshire Bach Society will bring choral music back to the area in grand fashion with a program of Bach and Vivaldi at the First Congregational Church, James Bagwell conducting.
As I wrote in The Berkshire Edge in September, singing in a choir provides a rare kind of pleasure that you can’t get anywhere else: “Feelings of camaraderie blend well with the sense of awe that great choral music inspires.” It was a rather sad observation at the time, because choristers and their audiences, bereft of these pleasures, knew they would wait a long time before gathering again to perform or share live choir music.
Folks at the Berkshire Bach Society know how much this means to area music lovers: “We are delighted to present this concert of uplifting and celebratory music to our audience as we emerge from two long years of the pandemic,” Terrill McDade, the Society’s Interim Executive Director said in a statement. Most tellingly, McDade calls Saturday’s presentation “a concert of comfort food for the soul.”
As Professor of Music and Director of Performance Studies at Bard College, James Bagwell is familiar to Berkshire audiences. If you read his bio, you will agree that Bagwell has trained choruses for more American and international orchestras than I can name here. But the highlights include the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, and Los Angeles Philharmonic.
The conductors Bagwell has worked with as a preparer of choruses are likewise innumerable, but the list includes Andris Nelsons, Alan Gilbert, Zubin Mehta, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Robert Shaw. He recently prepared the Concert Chorale of New York for performances of Leonard Bernstein’s “Kaddish Symphony” with the New York Philharmonic.
Mr. Bagwell recently assumed the associate conductor post at The Orchestra Now and is principal guest conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra. No stranger to pop music, Bagwell has collaborated with singer and composer Natalie Merchant, conducting orchestras for her shows with the San Francisco and Seattle Symphonies and others.
Because they are part of his regular performance repertoire, both pieces on Saturday’s program are well known to Bagwell: J.S. Bach’s sublime “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme” BWV 140, (performed here, spot on, by the Netherlands Bach Society) and Antonio Vivaldi’s magnificent “Gloria in D Major,” RV 589. Bagwell’s familiarity with these works will undoubtedly make them a joy to rehearse for the performing musicians. The rest of us, alas, will get to hear them only one time through on Saturday.
When the Society writes of “uplifting and celebratory music,” it’s a safe bet they’re referring to Vivaldi’s “Gloria in D Major,” a 30-minute work in 12 movements with joy enough to spare.
Our souls could use some comfort food after all the discomfort and outright horror they have endured over the last five years. And the comfort Bach’s music provides, combined with the joy of Vivaldi’s, is exactly what the doctor ordered.
Tickets available here and at the door. Seats $60/$40/$35. Full masking required.
