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Music Worcester will be putting on an impressive sounding birthday celebration on the weekend of March 21-23 in Mechanics Hall.
This March is the 340th birthday of German composer Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music.
Music Worcester is having its first “Bach Birthday Bash” weekend with four concerts featuring 14 of the composer’s works performed by local and international-caliber musicians. There’s probably nothing going on quite like it anywhere else.
The weekend is part of The Complete Bach, Music Worcester’s unique 11-year project to present live performances of all 1000+ works written by J.S. Bach that got underway in October with the first “BACHtoberfest.” The project consists of 132 concerts over 11 years, culminating on March 21, 2035, the 350th anniversary of Bach’s birth.
Embracing the ‘human experience’
“Bach is a huge part of my life as a musician, a performer and a person. His music embraces so much of human experience,” said acclaimed American pianist Jeremy Denk, who will get the 340th birthday weekend started by playing the Complete Keyboard Partitas of Bach at 7 p.m. on March 21.
On March 22 there will be two concerts. At 4 p.m. the Worcester Chorus under the direction of Chris Shepard, who is also the artistic director of The Complete Bach, will sing the secular cantatas Bach BWV 213 and 214. Soloists from Boston’sEmmanuel Music will join the chorus. Then at 8 p.m., Bach’s Concerti for Two Harpsichords will be performed by Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society with harpsichordists Ian Watson (well known to Worcester audiences) and John McKean.
The specially formed Worcester Bach Collective, which brings together a wide range of musical organizations in Worcester and beyond to perform, will perform cantatas BWV 28, 36, 40, 64, and 133 at 4 p.m. March 23. The concert includes singers from Trinity Lutheran Choir (directed byMark Mummert), Worcester Polytechnic Institute Choirs (led by Joshua W. Rohde), Master Singers of Worcester (directed by Edward Tyler), All Saints Choir (Kevin Neel, director of music), and select members of the Worcester Chorus (directed by Shepard). Each conductor will lead one cantata. There will be complimentary birthday cake and champagne at intermission. After all, you’re only 340 once. All the concerts are in Mechanics Hall.
“All I can say is that this project is humming along even better than I ever could have imagined,” Shepard said. “The ‘BACHtoberfest’ weekend was a huge success, with big crowds and a large choir with singers from far and wide.” For the “Bach Birthday Bash”‘ weekend there is ” truly something for everybody,” he added.
“Best of all, the buzz surrounding The Complete Bach in Worcester is palpable, and it’s so encouraging to feel all the support that local audiences and musicians have given the project. What a time to be in Worcester!”
‘A bit of Bach in it’
Denk is no stranger to Music Worcester and Mechanics Hall, and certainly not this month. He was here on March 8, filling in at the last minute as the guest pianist with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields from England after Canadian pianist Bruce Liu had to drop out of his tour with the chamber orchestra because of illness. Denk performed the originally scheduled Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 1.
“It has a bit of Bach in it,” Denk said of the Shostakovich work during a recent interview.
Actually, Denk has been called “a pianist you want to hear no matter what he performs” by the New York Times. Denk grew up in New Mexico and now lives in New York City while performing around the world.
He is a recipient of both the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and the Avery Fisher Prize. He is also known for his original and insightful writing and commentary on music. His New York Times bestselling memoir “Every Good Boy Does Fine” was published by Random House in 2022. His original blog, “Think Denk,” recounted his experiences of touring, performing, and practicing. In 2024, he resumed his blogging on the Substack platform with a blog titled “Denk Again.”
As he was looking ahead last month to his Mechanics Hall engagements, Denk said “It’s one of the must beautiful halls in America, so I’ll be glad to be back.”
The Complete Keyboard Partitas is a set of six keyboard suites and it is the last set of suites Bach composed.
“Each one is kind of a mixed tape of dances. Each one has its world of feeling. They begin simply and then explode into incredible richness and complexity,” Denk said.
“By the end you feel you’ve had a journey from one end of the world to the other. You get to see every shade of emotion in them.”
Played together, the suites total about two hours of music. “They’re very demanding in terms of concentration,” Denk observed.
‘Out of nowhere’
Published as a memoir about his musical and personal journeys, “Every Good Boy Does Fine” includes Denk’s relationships with his teachers that have influenced and informed his career. Music Worcester will host a book signing immediately after his March 21 recital.
A key mentor was Hungarian-born American pianist and professor Gyorgy Sebok at Indiana University who emphasized the importance of musicality and humanizing each note.
Denk said the MacArthur “Genius” grant “came out of nowhere. It was kind of overwhelming in the sense because you feel you must do something important just to deserve the award.”
Denk has performed Bach extensively in his career, with recordings that include Bach’s “Goldberg Variations.” In 2015 in Mechanics Hall, also with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, he performed Bach’s Keyboard Concerto No. 2 in E major and Keyboard Concerto No. 4 in A major.
Asked about getting young people involved with classical music and following something like The Complete Bach project, he said “there are a lot of young people who are passionate about Bach … A lot of people are experimenting with online ways to bring classical music to people.”
Meanwhile, a YouTube video that Denk made for NPR explaining the “Goldberg Variations” has “reached more people than anything else I had ever done,” he said.
Bach has ” an ever-lovable quality to him that’s universal. There’s an energy that carries you from the beginning to the end,” Denk said. Or to put it another way, “really good tunes that people can’t get out of their heads.”
Jeremy Denk — The Complete Keyboard Partitas of Bach, presented by Music Worcester
When: 7 p.m. March 21
Where: Mechanics Hall, 321 Main St., Worcester
How much: $54 to $75; student, $17.50; youth, $7.50. musicworcester.org.
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