Welcome to the 29^th Season

By Jonathan Sternberg, Artistic Director

The theme “Bach to the Future”, which we have chosen to parallel the Bach-Fest Leipzig, reflects the three different focuses of our new season. So does the season’s graphic motif, which you see on the left.

Firstly, with a new team in Chestnut Hill, the Bach Festival of Philadelphia itself is back on its way to producing a year-long series of concerts as well as a world-class festival, as it did in the past with international stars. From a personal point of view, I find this very rewarding, as I am returning to the early days of my own career with Bach and hope to convey to you the “Bach to the Future” spirit that has comforted and excited me so often in the past and which will guide us into the future. With this and your generous support, the future of the Bach Festival of Philadelphia can indeed be bright.

Secondly, we want to foster young musicians and help them in the early stages of their careers. I myself was very lucky when in 1951 as a young conductor I got the chance to record Bach Cantatas for the first time ever on LP. The Festival, therefore, has set up a number of concerts series, which bring Bach to the future generation of musicians and audience members and offer young artists from the area the opportunity to present their talents.

Finally, the Festival intends to relate Bach to the future ways of interpretation and to make the music meaningful to today’s audiences. I remember well, shortly after the war, when I premiered Leopold Stokowski’s transcriptions of Bach works in Vienna. This was indeed very controversial in those tradition bound days. Since then, Philadelphia has seen many creative interpretations of Bach’s music. We want to continue this tradition, for example, with a series of all of his little known masses integrated into church services. In addition we want to inaugurate the “Bach to the Future” competition. Thus, we hope to give artists a chance to explore their ways of interpreting the never-ending richness of Bach’s music.

I invite, and urge you to enjoy the wonderful music of Johann Sebastian Bach and hope to meet you at one of our concerts.

Yours Most Sincerely,

Jonathan Sternberg