In 2025 Consortium Aurora Borealis and the rest of the musical world mark the 275th anniversary of the death of Johann Sebastian Bach. This towering figure of the Baroque surpassed all others during this period, and was venerated throughout history as one of the greatest composers of all time. Composer Richard Wagner called Bach “the most stupendous miracle in all music!”
We therefore invite you to our “J. S. Bach and Sons” concert, an evening of eloquent chamber music. We’ll hear gorgeous solos, duets, and trios by this supreme genius of music, as well as by two of his composer-sons, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Both sons were keyboard virtuosos, wrote expressively and innovatively in their own unique voices, enjoyed renown, and bridged Baroque and Classical styles. Flutists Penelope Clarke, Doris Dungan, and cellist Peter Cosbey reunite, joined by special guest harpsichordist Borys Medicky of Toronto.
We include two C. P. E. Bach trio sonatas, the E-major in the new “sensitive style”, and the D-minor melodiously pleasing. We’ll hear one of W. F. Bach’s six spirited flute duos, among the period’s finest, with buoyant brilliance of character, joyous invention, and equally-shared participation.
The liquid flute sound intermingles beautifully with the harpsichord in two solo sonatas. Doris’s ravishing JSB sonata is partnered with an active obbligato keyboard part; Penelope’s WFB piece is supported also by cello. An exquisite J. S. Bach trio sonata caps off the evening. The flutes interweave, flowing gently, moving into a lively allegro, relaxing into calmness, and concluding with a jolly triple fugue.
Borys Medicky concertizes extensively as harpsichord soloist and chamber musician, as well as being a church musician and a sought-after harpsichord technician and maker. While in town he’ll make necessary repairs to our own instrument.
I now invite him to speak about his part of the concert.
Anyone who takes a serious interest in Baroque music must confront the gigantic figure of Johann Sebastian Bach, who seemingly looms over the entire era from start to finish. But I find myself just as interested in the generation before Bach—musicians who lived in a world free of his titanic influence and who in turn influenced him—as in the period immediately following, in which his composer-sons and numerous students featured. Our concert tonight largely focuses on the post-Baroque era, with works by Bach’s two eldest sons and their father.
Despite venerating Bach as part of the pantheon of all-time greats, we must remind ourselves that in his own lifetime, Johann Sebastian was esteemed more as a brilliant organist and improviser and less as a composer: his music was seen as dated, “artificial” and excessively complex in an age increasingly turning to a simpler and more “natural” musical style. But the passage of time is an advantage for us: while Bach’s younger contemporaries could only compare his music with the prevailing new style they worked in, by the standards of which he was found wanting, we can understand and appreciate him in the context of his forebears and followers.
Although the general public valued Bach as a performer, his sons and students had to come to terms with his superhuman abilities as a composer, with which they felt they could not compare. Bach’s oldest surviving son, Wilhelm Friedemann, seemed overcome by depression in comparing his own music to that of his father, and in his lifetime was, like his father, honoured more as a superb performer and improviser. Nineteenth-century music scholars unfairly maligned W. F. for not measuring up to Johann Sebastian—as if that were his fault somehow—and failed to appreciate that the hard life he led, which slid into increasingly dire financial straits, was due more to him being a difficult person and less a wastrel and alcoholic, an accusation often levied against him by nineteenth-century music historians. Fortunately, recent musical scholarship is taking a more sympathetic view of this curious son.
Carl Philipp Emanuel, the second and most famous son, wrote frankly about the challenges of being descended from an illustrious father and the responsibility he bore for carrying on his musical legacy. C. P. E. avoided the mental pitfalls his brother fell victim to by carving out an identity for himself free of the most onerous baggage of his ancestry, and was renowned both for his genius in improvisation and his gifts as a pedagogue. Of C. P. E., Ludwig van Beethoven said, “He is the father and we are the children”, and in agreeing to take on the young Carl Czerny as a pupil, Beethoven instructed him to make sure he obtained a copy of Bach’s famous keyboard treatise, the Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments, which he was to bring to the first lesson.
I have chosen keyboard solos by each of the Bachs featured on this program. For a contribution by the senior Bach, I selected the Fantasia in Aminor, BWV 904. This piece is customarily paired with a fugue and the two are performed together, but there is no evidence that they were conceived as inseparable members of a set at any point during Bach’s lifetime or indeed until the nineteenth century. In the various surviving sources, the Fantasia appears on its own without the fugue, sometimes with conflicting subtitles such as pro cembalo (for harpsichord) or manualiter (implying it could be an organ piece for keyboard without pedals).
The sources cannot even agree on whether the final chord is major or minor, and if piece is performed on its own as it will be tonight, the choice seems of weightier significance than if the fugue were to follow. I confess I am not certain exactly how the piece should end either, so I suppose we will all find out together in the moment of the performance! In any case, this is a work by the young Bach from almost the beginning of his musical career, employing the counterpoint which was already falling out of fashion in Bach’s youth, its old strictness tempered by late Baroque sensibilities.
The Sonata in B minor, Wq. 55/3 by C. P. E. Bach is a piece in the Empfindsamer stil (“sensitive style”) that emerged in the post-Baroque period. Music composed in this vein aimed to express a wide range of deeply felt “natural” emotions, employing sudden contrasts in mood and dynamics. The first two movements feature musical ideas that begin logically but are truncated, trail off dynamically or peter out in energy. An interesting challenge is how to convey the notated dynamic markings: the harpsichord is not capable of drastic dynamic changes like the modern piano, as the mechanism plucks the strings with quills whose stiffness determines the resulting volume of tone, with no meaningful changes possible by varying the finger pressure at the keyboard. Nonetheless, C. P. E. was clear he expected the instrument to express dynamic contrasts, possibly by moving between keyboards on a two-keyboard harpsichord…although he throws down another challenge by declaring that “only one [keyboard] should be used to play detailed changes of forte and piano”!
W. F. Bach’s Fantasia in A minor, F. 23, is very much in the style of a written-out improvisation, and not unlike the middle movement of C. P. E. Bach’s sonata, which we might imagine as consisting of only two composed movements linked together in live performance by an extemporized bridge. W. F.’s fantasias depend a great deal on sequences that sit easily under the hand and are repeated on successively higher starting pitches or modulated through the circle of fifths, as if to preserve the conceit that the feverishly improvising performer needs a few brief moments of mental preparation before deciding what to do next. The “sensitive style” is again much in evidence, with its sharp contrasts and almost jarring changes of mood. Rhythmically speaking, although the music is mostly unbarred except towards end, there are still moments where a pulse can be felt, which contrast with those in which the performance can largely free itself from the note values on the page.
I am delighted to make my debut in this concert series and express my gratitude to Elizabeth for the invitation to perform this evening.
Special thanks to Borys Medicky, our guest harpsichordist, for sharing his insights into the composers featured on this concert and on the solos he will be performing.
Details of our upcoming musical offerings are given below in the link to our new Season Brochure, which we invite you to peruse.
Check out our beautiful 47th season brochure, artistically created for us by graphic designer Krista Hansen of eleven-seventeen.com, providing details of all our 2025-2026 concerts, as well as information about our organization.
Find us on Facebook!
Next up, on Saturday, January 10, 2026, 7:30 PM, St .Pauls United Church:
Classic and Romantic String Quintets:
Greet the New Year in style with a concert of sublime Classic and Romantic String Quintets. Thrill to the rich sound of two violas in the inner voices. Mozart’s monumental C major quintet is regarded as one of his greatest chamber music works. Breathtaking String Quintet Opus 111 by Romantic-era Brahms stuns with its rich symphonic texture, dramatically assertive cello opening, and its lively Hungarian Czardas finale. Violinists Katie Stevens and James Moat, violists Patrick Horn and Geena Salway, and cellist Peter Cosbey perform these powerful and extraordinary works.
We remind you that we are approaching the year end, and that it is your contributions which help us to continue to bring exciting music to Thunder Bay. Consortium Aurora Borealis is a registered, non-profit, charitable organization, very proud to be bringing top-calibre chamber music concerts to our community for an amazing 47 years!
Our admission ticket revenue only pays for a portion of our costs, and your donations really help us to bring exciting music and talented artists to you. Every donation, no matter the size, is truly appreciated, and makes a big impact on our ability to source and perform so much exquisite music.
Please donate to ensure that our lives may be enriched by music for many more years to come! You will be issued a 2025 charitable donation receipt for income tax purposes, and your generosity will be acknowledged on the donor list in our printed programs and on our website.
I invite you to return for our next concert on January 10 as we hail the New Year, and in the meantime I wish you a wonderful holiday season, full of joy and many good things!
Thanks as ever to all of you for your interest in our musical offerings, and for your great support!
Warmly,
Elizabeth