American Bach: A Tale of Four Cities

Late yesterday afternoon American Bach presented the first concert in its 2025–2026 season in St. Mark’s Lutheran Church. The title of the program was A Grand Tour, with each of the four works on the program associated with a different European city: London, Leipzig, Venice, and Rome. Jeffrey Thomas led the American Bach Soloists & Cantorei, the latter providing six solo vocalists: sopranos Julie Bosworth and Morgan Balfour, contralto Ágnes Vojtkó, countertenor Kyle Tingzon, tenor Jon Lee Keenan, and baritone Jesse Blumberg.

Queen Anne of Great Britain, for whom HWV 74 was composed (artist unknown, public domain, from Wikimedia Commons)

The entire program was framed by choral compositions by George Frideric Handel. It began with the secular cantata Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne (HWV 74), which takes the first line, “Eternal source of light divine” as an alternative title. This was probably performed for the first time on February 6, 1713. The “Roman” composition was HWV 232, the Dixit Dominus setting of Psalm 110, completed in April of 1707. In the first half of the program, Handel was coupled with Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1066, the first of his four orchestral suites, this one composed in the key of C major. The intermission was then followed by Antonio Vivaldi’s best known choral composition, his RV 589 setting of the “Gloria” portion of the Mass.

From my vantage point I could not see an empty seat in the church. American Bach has clearly built up an audience that was just as attentive as it was loyal. For my part, I was familiar with both the Bach and Vivaldi selections, while the two Handel offerings were new to me. Thomas definitely knew how to get things off to a good start, since the first entrance of the chorus in HWV 74 had me scribbling “burst of polyphony!” in my program book! Indeed, the entire program proceeded at a fair clip; and for any attentive listener there was never a dull moment.

This is American Bach’s 37th season. It is definitely off to a good start. My wife and I have always begun New Year’s Eve with the annual Baroque New Year’s Eve at the Opera program in Herbst Theatre. I am already looking forward to it!