JUILLIARD HISTORICAL PERFORMANCE COLLABORATES WITH
THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF MUSIC, CONDUCTOR MASAAKI SUZUKI, AND
VIOLINIST RACHEL PODGER IN AN ALL-BACH PROGRAM
WITH PERFORMANCES IN BOSTON, NYC, LEIPZIG, AND LONDON IN JUNE 2015
Juilliard Historical Performance Makes Its
Debut Appearance at the Boston Early Music Festival and at the Leipzig Bach Festival
Performances With the Combined Ensembles Take Place in Boston (June 13, 2015),
NYC (June 15, 2015), Leipzig (June 19, 2015) and London (June 21, 2015)
NEW YORK –– The Juilliard School in New York and the Royal Academy of Music in London announce their latest collaboration. This month, historical performance instrumentalists and singers from these two world-renowned conservatories will perform together in the United States and Europe, conducted by renowned Bach authority Masaaki Suzuki. The orchestra and chorus will be divided equally between students from each conservatory, with each institution also providing one soloist for J.S. Bach’s Double Violin Concerto. The concertmaster of the orchestra will be Rachel Podger, the Royal Academy of Music’s Micaela Comberti Chair of Baroque Violin.
Juilliard415 will be making its debut appearance at the Boston Early Music Festival and at the Leipzig Bach Festival, where the ensemble will be performing in St. Thomas Church where Bach was Kapellmeister.
Tickets for the June 15 Alice Tully Hall concert are available for $30 at Alice Tully Hall Box Office or at events.juilliard.edu. Tickets are free for Juilliard students; non-Juilliard students may purchase tickets for $10, only at the Alice Tully Hall Box Office.
Complete program:
J.S. Bach Cantata Die Elenden sollen essen, BWV 75
J.S. Bach Double Violin Concerto in D Minor, BWV 1043
J.S. Bach Cantata Lobet Gott in seinen Reichen, BWV 11 (Ascension Oratorio)
Vocal soloists feature soprano Mary Feminear (from Juilliard), mezzo-soprano Anna Harvey (from RAM), tenor Gwilym Bowen (from RAM), baritone Elliott Carlton Hines (from Juilliard). Violin soloists in Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins in D Major, BWV 1043 are Davina Clarke (from RAM) and Carrie Krause (from Juilliard).
After rehearsals in New York, the group will perform at the Boston Early Music Festival on Saturday, June 13, 2015; Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center in New York on Monday, June 15, 2015; and in Bach’s own St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, Germany on Friday, June 19, 2015, as part of the Leipzig Bach Festival. The final performance will be in London at the Duke’s Hall at the Royal Academy of Music on Sunday, June 21, 2015, as part of the seventh year of the Royal Academy of Music/Kohn Foundation Bach Cantata Series.
Mr. Suzuki and Ms. Podger are recent winners of the Royal Academy of Music Bach Prize, supported by the Kohn Foundation. The Royal Academy of Music Bach Prize is awarded annually to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the performance and/or scholarly study of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Masaki Suzuki (Photo by Marco Borggreve)
About Masaaki Suzuki
Since founding Bach Collegium Japan in 1990, Masaaki Suzuki has established himself as a leading authority on the works of Bach, and his impressive discography on the BIS label includes all Bach’s major choral works and the complete cycle of cantatas. He is now also invited to conduct repertoire as diverse as Britten, Fauré, Mahler, Poulenc and Stravinsky with orchestras such as the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, Melbourne Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Tokyo Philharmonic.
This season he debuts with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, and the Orchestra of the Perm State Theatre of Opera and Ballet. Other conducting appearances include the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya, Bergen Philharmonic, Tapiola Sinfonietta and Orquestra Barroca Casa da Música. He was named artist-in-association at Casa da musica Porto’s 2014 Baroque festival with Bach Collegium Japan, and in summer 2015 he performs at the Oregon Bach Festival, where he also directs students in the new Berwick Academy.
Masaaki Suzuki continues as an active organist and harpsichordist. Founder and head of the early music department at the Tokyo University of the Arts; he is currently visiting professor of choral conducting at the Yale School of Music and Yale Institute of Sacred Music, and the conductor of Yale Schola Cantorum.
Rachel Podger (Photo by Jonas Sacks)
About Rachel Podger
One of the most creative talents to emerge in the field of period performance over the last two decades, Rachel Podger has established herself as a leading interpreter of the music of the Baroque and Classical periods. Ms. Podger has enjoyed numerous collaborations as a guest director and soloist with orchestras all over the world. Highlights include Arte dei Suonatori (Poland), Santa Fe Pro Musica (U.S.A.), the Academy of Ancient Music, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the European Union Baroque Orchestra, Holland Baroque Society, Tafelmusik (Toronto), and the Handel and Haydn Society (U.S.A.). In 2012 she curated a Bach festival in Tokyo.
Ms. Podger records exclusively for Channel Classics and has won numerous prestigious awards, including Diapasons d’Or and a Gramophone Award. In 2014 she won a BBC Music Magazine award in the instrumental category for Guardian Angel. Her latest release is Perla Barocca, a disc of 17th-century Italian violin music. She directs her own ensemble, Brecon Baroque, resident at the Brecon Baroque Festival in Wales.
Ms. Podger is an honorary member of both the Royal Academy of Music, where she holds the Micaela Comberti Chair for Baroque Violin, and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, where she holds the Jane Hodge Foundation International Chair in Baroque Violin. In February 2015 she was awarded the prestigious Royal Academy of Music Bach Prize.
Previous cross-Atlantic projects by the partner organizations:
The Juilliard School and the Royal Academy of Music (London) have most recently collaborated on symphonic performances in 2012 at both Lincoln Center in New York and the BBC Proms in London, conducted by John Adams (following a Prom in 2005 with Sir Colin Davis); and the co-commissioning and premiere productions in 2011 of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s Kommilitonen!, the new opera which met with remarkable success in both London and New York. (The U.S. premiere of the opera took place at Juilliard.) Further Academy and Juilliard collaborations include composition and chamber music projects on both sides of the Atlantic, a string ensemble concert at Wigmore Hall, and performances at Radio City Music Hall with Sir Elton John, who himself studied at the Royal Academy of Music.
About Juilliard Historical Performance
Juilliard’s Historical Performance program enters its sixth year in the 2014-15 season. Established in 2009, the program is open to candidates for Master of Music, Graduate Diploma, and the Doctor of Musical Arts degrees, and it offers comprehensive study focusing on music from the 17th and 18th centuries. The performance-oriented curriculum fosters an informed, vital understanding of the many issues unique to period instrument performance with the level of technical excellence and musical integrity for which Juilliard is renowned. Joint projects and collaborations with Juilliard’s Ellen and James S. Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts and with modern-instrument students outside of the Historical Performance program are an integral part of the program.
The program features residencies and master classes with many of the leading figures in early music. Recent guests have included Arcangelo, Harry Bicket, Fabio Biondi, William Christie and members of Les Arts Florissants, Harry Christophers, Fretwork, Jane Gower, Christopher Hogwood, John Holloway,
Dame Emma Kirkby, Manfredo Kraemer, Jakob Lindberg, London Haydn Quartet, Nicholas McGegan, Lars Ulrik Mortensen, and Jordi Savall. Christie, Savall, and Egarr, are returning guest artists who work intensively with students in repertoire-focused residencies that culminate in public performances.
About the Royal Academy of Music
Since 1822 the Royal Academy of Music has prepared students for successful careers in music according to the constantly evolving demands of the profession. Academy musicians study instrumental performance, composition, jazz, musical theatre and opera. The Academy’s student community is truly international, with over 50 countries represented. As the Academy approaches its bicentenary it goes from strength to strength. In the past three years alone, the Academy has been rated the best conservatoire for research by the Times Higher, the top conservatoire and the second-highest rated institution in the country for student satisfaction in the National Student Survey, and top conservatoire in The Times University Guide.
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PROGRAM LISTING:
Monday, June 15, 2015, 8 p.m. in Alice Tully Hall
Juilliard Historical Performance
Royal Academy of Music
Masaaki Suzuki, conductor
Rachel Podger, concertmaster
Mary Feminear, soprano
Anna Harvey, mezzo-soprano
Gwilym Bowen, tenor
Elliott Carlton Hines, baritone
Davina Clarke and Carrie Krause, violin
J.S. Bach Cantata Die Elenden sollen essen, BWV 75
J.S. Bach Double Violin Concerto in D Minor, BWV 1043
J.S. Bach Cantata Lobet Gott in seinen Reichen, BWV 11 (Ascension Oratorio)
Tickets for the June 15 Alice Tully Hall concert are available for $30 at Alice Tully Hall Box Office or at events.juilliard.edu. Tickets are free for Juilliard students; non-Juilliard students may purchase tickets for $10, only at the Alice Tully Hall Box Office.
Performances with the combined ensembles take place in Boston (June 13, 2015), NYC (June 15, 2015), Leipzig (June 19, 2015) and London (June 21, 2015).
