For a special Bach 360 edition of the Young Artists Showcase, host Bob Sherman presents some interesting performances on instruments and in arrangements that Johann Sebastian wouldn’t have imagined.

The program begins gently with 2004 Young Artists alum Emmanuel Ceysson on harp. Then a few Young Artists guests from 2008: Dror Baitel playing a Violin Partita on piano; the Jerusalem Young Saxophone Quartet performing an arrangement of the famous “Air on the G string;” and a marimba percussion duo arrangement of the 2nd English Suite.

Then the program takes a trip to Iowa for Percy Grainger’s take on the chorale Sheep May Safely Graze, and to Frankfurt, Germany, for cantata reimaginings by the Calmus Ensemble of Leipzig. Encores are provided by Jacques Loussier and his jazz trio.

Program details:

J.S. Bach: Courante and Gigue from French Suite No. 3
— Emanuel Ceysson, harp.

J.S. Bach (arr. Rachmaninoff): Prelude, Gavotte and Gigue from Violin Partita in E
— Dror Baitel, piano.

J.S. Bach: Air from Orchestral Suite No. 3
— Jerusalem Young Saxophone Quartet.

J.S. Bach: Prelude, Allemande, Bourrees and Gigue from English Suite No. 2
— PercaDu (marimba and percussion duo).

J.S. Bach (arr. Percy Grainger): Blithe Bells ("A Ramble on Bach’s Sheep May Safely Graze")
— University of Iowa Symphony Band; Myron Welch, conductor.

J.S. Bach: “Hat man nicht mit seinen Kindern” from the Coffee Cantata 211
J.S. Bach: “Weichet nur, betrübte Schatten” from the Wedding Cantata 202
— Calmus Ensemble of Leipzig.

J.S. Bach (arr. Jacques Loussier: Little Fugue in G Minor
— Jacques Loussier Trio.

Free Download: Simone Dinnerstein plays Bach's Prelude in G minor
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For years everybody's shortlist of imaginative takes on the music of Bach began and ended with Walter Carlos's crossover classic "Switched-on Bach," which came out in 1968 — back when Glenn Gould was still alive and young, a “long-playing” record could spin for just 22 minutes before you had to turn it over, and a synthesizer like Carlos's Moog could play only one note at a time. But creative people have been reinventing Bach continuously since then in all sorts of musical and artistic disciples. Here are three of my favorites:

Bach Choir director Joshua Rifkin's 1982 recording of the Mass in B Minor was dubbed the “B minor madrigal” for its use of only one voice on a part: nine at all. It's faithful to Bach's text, but it doesn't sound the way you expect a Mass to sound: the singers might be doo-wop singers under a streetlight, or Baroque ancestors of the Philadelphians who sing around a fire in a barrel in "Rocky." They don't sound like a chorus: they sound like some people singing – singing Bach.   

C.K. Williams' poem “Time: 1976” isn't about Bach per se: it has to do with the way certain crucial moments circulate fugally in the memory, so that as they occur they seem to anticipate the fact that we'll remember them later on. The poet is in his apartment in Paris, where a recording of Bach's Musical Offering is playing and his wife is reading a book aloud to his son — and he feels his mind rushing forward twenty years into a moment, same apartment, same music, in which he regrets the loss of the moment he is in here and now. He feels he is in the future already and Bach has taken him there: “It must be the music – / the Bach surely is real, I can hear it / that drives me so poignantly, expectantly back / to remember again that morning of innocent peace a lifetime ago when I came towards them."

Scholars used to debate whether Bach was more painter or poet – but this poem shows how his music can call forth poetry strongly suggestive of Bach.  

Just out of conservatory, guitarist Peter Blanchette turned to an instrument specially fashioned so that he could play the music of Bach with a full array of contrapuntal lines. The archguitar, as he calls it, has a body akin to a baritone ukelele, a broad fingerboard with eleven strings, and a neck that comes off — so he can stow the instrument in an airplane's overhead bin when he travels to Europe, where he spent the eighties playing Bach in piazzas. His Archguitar Bach recording is at once self-sufficient and generous, austere yet not antiquarian.  

The pianist Donal Fox has been said to blend Bach and jazz – and Bach and Thelonious Monk in particular – but that's not quite right. When Fox plays, you can hear that the music has long since been blended by his sensibility, so that words like “crossover” are brittle and unnecessary. It may be that I hear his music that way because I had the privilege of sitting next to him at a piano in Boston while he worked some variations on Bach right on the spot. But you can hear it for yourself in his “Variations on a Bach Fugue,” with quartet, or his composition “Toccata on Bach.” So put away those Jacques Loussier and Swingles Singers records and get some Bach by Fox!   

Paul Elie's book Reinventing Bach, published in 2012, was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist.

Free Download: Simone Dinnerstein plays Bach's Prelude in G minor

Simone Dinnerstein and singer-songwriter Tift Merrit collaborate on the new album, "Night," which shows how the worlds of classical music, folk and jazz increasingly intersect. The recording contains songs from the likes of Franz Schubert, Billie Holiday, Brad Mehldau, Leonard Cohen and Henry Purcell, as well as Merrit herself and even a touch of Bach, as heard in the above download. (Available at Arkivmusic.com)

• Listen to Simone Dinnerstein debate Bach interpretation on WQXR's Conducting Business

Programming Highlights for Wednesday (All Times Approximate)

7:00 am    Well-Tempered Clavier a la Turk // Django Reinhardt with Stephane Grappelli and Eddie South

8:00 am    Leopold Stokowski // Wendy Carlos 

9:00 am    The Swingle Singers // PDQ Bach

11:00 am Anton Webern reimagines Bach

12:00 noon Bela Fleck, Chris Thile & Edgar Meyer

1:00 pm    International Contemporary Ensemble

3:00 pm    Leopold Stokowski // The Luce Trio

4:00 pm    Modern Jazz Quartet

6:00 pm    Chris Thile // Barroco Andino, an ensemble playing indigenous Andean instruments

9:00 pm    Bob Sherman & the Young Artists Showcase celebrate Bach

Slideshow: A Gallery of Cross-Genre Bach Recordings

All musical instruments are wonders. They thrill us in their function and are often admirable for their beauty as well. But there’s probably only one instrument that can also elicit a sense of grandeur: the pipe organ, one of the instruments with which J.S. Bach is most closely associated.

The pipe organ combines craft, science, and art – woodworking, metallurgy, pneumatics, architecture, mechanical engineering, acoustics and aesthetics, often on a grand scale. And it’s all in the service of music. Some of the pipe organs that were around in Bach’s time are still in service today, albeit with renovations. For Bach 360, our celebration of J.S. Bach’s music, we sat down with Juilliard organ department chairman Paul Jacobs to talk about the instrument.

Well, actually, he sat down at the console of the Johannes Klais organ in the sanctuary of St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, in the ground floor of the Citicorp Building in Manhattan. The Klais organ is a mechanical-action instrument, also called a tracker-action organ. Trackers are the thin slats of wood that directly connect the keys played by the organist to the valves beneath each pipe that open when the keys are depressed. (You’ll see the trackers in this video, inside a door in the organ that’s normally kept closed.)

In this digital age, tracker-action organs are quite old-fashioned, but preferred by some organists. Trackers were state-of-the-art technology in Bach’s time, and remain a wonder even in ours. There are really only two differences between the mechanical-action pipe organs of Bach’s day and ours: The sound combinations chosen by the organist are now stored and can be controlled electronically, and today you no longer need two people to play a pipe organ.

Two? Of course – one person to play it, and the other to pump the bellows that filled the instrument with air. That job is now done by electricity, which means the whole experience inspires a lot less perspiration than it used to. But the pipe organ is just as grand, just as majestic, and just as wondrous as it was when Bach was on the bench.

In bedrooms and living rooms around the world there are amateur rock guitarists who cut their teeth on classical music. Bach's music stands as a favorite for young guitar nerds. With his endless melodic lines that require virtuosic technique, Bach's compositions are often a perfect storm of opportunity for rock guitarists to showcase their talents and geek out.

Here are five examples of Bachian guitar shredding, some famous and some amateur. Long Live Bach!

Yngwie Malmsteen threw Bach into his solo 2 minutes in: 

Everyone in the band must have long hair: 

Best. Backdrops. Ever. 

Paul Gilbert from Racer X – worth it because he says he learned this from the Well-Tempered Clavier by EAR! 

A duet for the Double Violin Concerto. The head is cropped out to assure anonymity: 

Do you have a favorite Bach guitar video? Share it in the comments box below.

Free Download: Harpsichordist Richard Egarr Plays the English Suite No. 2, Gigue
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Beyond religion, beyond duty, beyond fashion lies J.S. Bach’s music for keyboard. No faith to reaffirm. No Judgment Day to fear – at least in the non-organ works (which were a part of Bach’s professional religious life). His other keyboard music stands apart from the organ pieces – from all of Bach’s output, actually – and require little or no cultural extrapolation to understand what it’s saying.

All tidily packaged, the Partitas, English Suites and French Suites come in sets of six, based on baroque dance and sometimes showing Bach at his open-heartedness. The Well-Tempered Clavier comes in two books (1722 and 1742), each consisting of 24 preludes and fugues. The Art of the Fugue (published in 1751 a year after Bach’s death) is a magnum opus of 14 fugues and two canons that appears to be conceived for keyboard but may well transcend instruments and is better studied than heard.

Some see Bach’s keyboard music as models of Germanic obsession, of pursuing an idea doggedly until every single possibility is exhausted. Really, 48 preludes and fugues in the two books of The Well-Tempered Clavier? Others thank God that he did with such a limitless sense of invention, the two sets showing Bach at different points in his compositional evolution but operating with a beauty of logic sends people back to Bach to cleanse their ears after so much earthly Beethovenian angst. This music is also central to understanding Bach.  

Book I is the most popular due to its thematic strengths. You can’t quite call the music tuneful because of its tabula rasa qualities. But once heard, one never forgets how Bach weaves magic out of the basic C-major chord in the first prelude of the Well-Tempered Clavier. It enters your psyche with an effortless directness, like a glass of pure spring water that, in fact, mixes well with most anything. No wonder, then, that the music elicits such vastly different but convincing performances, some from the harpsichord community (Wanda Landowska’s majesty and Kenneth Gilbert’s elegance) others by pianists (Glenn Gould’s clarity-at-all-costs approach and Sviatoslav Richter’s existential confession).

The main point of entry to Bach’s music in our times is the Goldberg Variations, published in 1741, and written for Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, supposedly as insomnia music. As if anybody could sleep through Glenn Gould’s legendary 1955 recording? Gould misrepresented the piece by ignoring repeats and using wild, willful tempos that prompted critics at that time to call it jet-propelled Bach. Yet he brought charisma and romance to the music that was unprecedented in modern times. Since then, classic recordings by Andras Schiff, Angela Hewitt and Pierre Hantai have given the piece an expanse that make its journey as epic, in its way, as that of the St. Matthew Passion.

The Art of the Fugue is not often heard: It feels rarefied, beyond emotion, concerned mostly with the science and industry of fugal construction. The romanticist could run with the fact that Bach left the final and most complex fugue unfinished amid encroaching blindness and illness. Shades of Icarus? Did Bach come fatally close to the perfection of the God to whom he dedicated all of his works? Though scholars suggest the fugue was intentionally unfinished so others would attempt to do so, I believe that only death would stop Bach from finishing what he started.

Free Download: Harpsichordist Richard Egarr Plays the English Suite No. 2, Gigue

English keyboard player Richard Egarr takes on all six of Bach's English Suites on the harpsichord in a new 2-CD recording for Harmonia Mundi. (Available at Arkivmusic.com).

*Not into Facebook? The download will be included in this week's WQXR E-Newsletter, which goes out on Friday.

Slideshow: A Gallery of Cross-Genre Bach Recordings

FREE Download: Bach’s St. John Passion ("Betrachte, mein Seel") by the Portland Baroque Orchestra
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J.S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion has always gotten more respect than his other telling of the crucifixion story — the St. John Passion. The St. Matthew, with its six-part choir and double orchestra, is grander, about 45 minutes longer, and generally more imposing. But don't underestimate the St. John, which is getting several performances around the U.S. this season, and is the subject of a recent recording by the Portland Baroque Orchestra led by Monica Huggett (a portion can be downloaded above).

The St. John has been a somewhat harder sell in an era sensitive to ethnic characterizations, and has periodically stirred heated debate. "The gospel of John is problematic because of the burden it places upon the Jewish people for Jesus,” said WQXR host Kent Tritle. “There’s a comfort zone issue here.”

The controversy flared up in 1995 at Swarthmore College in Philadelphia, where several members of the college choir refused to perform the work because they perceived portions of the text as anti-Semitic. The performance made national headlines (though it was never cancelled) and it prompted scholars to explore how Bach handled the biblical verses in text and music.

Among those scholars was Michael Marissen, a noted Bach expert who teaches at Swarthmore, and who in 1996 published Lutheranism, Anti-Judaism, and Bach's St. John Passion. "It’s well known that there’s some challenging language in the Gospel of John,” he said in an interview this week at WQXR. “There’s the passion story itself which keeps referring specifically to the enemies of Jesus as ‘the Jews, the Jews, the Jews,’ which the other canonical gospels don’t.” Indeed, the word “Jews” appears about 70 times in the Gospel of John and appears only once or twice in the other gospels.  

“Most of the text of the St. John Passion is Biblical text taken right from John: 18 or 19,” said Marissen. Then, after every two or three verses, the story breaks off and a soloist or the choir sings verses from 16th, 17th or 18th century sources which comment on that part of the story.

Although Bach was not exactly at liberty to substantially change the wording of the biblical text, he could determine what to emphasize. Some question whether Bach’s setting of the difficult choruses is just a little too vivid. But Marissen argues that the composer was relatively restrained when compared with Handel or Telemann and their contemporary choral works. "Somewhat surprisingly, Bach’s St. John Passion does not take that tact,” said Marissen. “It leaves the Jews alone and harps on how sinful the Lutherans are and how they’re to blame for the death of Jesus.”

For Bach, it was a question of timing. Contemporary Lutheran belief held that the passion season wasn’t an appropriate window. "Before we get too happy that Bach is ecumenical and loving and so on, I’m sorry to say that’s not the case,” said Marissen. Bach’s Cantata BWV 44 Sie werden euch in den Bann tun (They shall put you out of the synagogues), which prescribes rough treatment of Jews, is particularly problematic, as are a handful of other pieces.

In modern performances of the St. John Passion, a few conductors have substituted terms like "rabble" for "Jews" or even printed disclaimers in their programs. Marissen advises against what he sees as soft-pedaling the work’s messages. “My own sort of theological view is that in order for the gospels to be significant and meaningful, it needn’t be the case that everything they say be beautiful and wonderful,” he said. “I don’t see why they can’t be important without being tainted by some level of ugliness as well.”

He adds that he wishes the Bach passions “be performed two or three times as often as they are because it would provide an excellent opportunity for having a conversation about meaning and life.” 

Audio: Marissen on the differences between the St. John & St. Matthew Passions:

FREE Download: Bach’s St. John Passion ("Betrachte, mein Seel") by the Portland Baroque Orchestra, Joshua Hopkins, bass

The Portland Baroque Orchestra, billed as the fourth-largest period-instrument ensemble in the US, performs the 1724 version of the St. John Passion. Joining the orchestra is Portland-based choir Cappella Romana and baroque specialist, English tenor Charles Daniels as the Evangelist. Monica Huggett, the orchestra's artistic director, conducts this performance (Available at Arkivmusic.com).

Programming Highlights for Friday (all times approximate)

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FREE Download: Hopkinson Smith Plays the Bach Suite No. 1 in G Major BWV 1007, Prelude
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As a boy, Bach was said to have a lovely soprano voice and got plenty of experience singing in choir. Later in life he wrote works that offer enough variety and surprise to challenge even the greatest singers.

But what kinds of voices did Bach exactly have in mind for his weekly cantatas, oratorios and passions? And when it comes to the upper range, which voice type is best suited for communicating the composer's music: boy sopranos, countertenors or women?

In Leipzig, Bach composed for a choir whose members ranged up to age 23 – that is, young men as well as boys. Bach's altos could have been either boys or men singing in a falsetto range (boys in the 18th century were able to sing in the treble range until they turned 17 or 18). Yet evidence is inconclusive as to which high voices Bach preferred.

The American Bach scholar Joshua Rifkin has noted that the standard practice in the German courts of the time was to use adult males to sing alto. But even if this is the case, and Bach’s altos were men, they may have sounded very different from today’s countertenors (men who sing in an alto range), possessing different tone production, declamation and phrasing. Some conductors today also prefer feature female voices, the argument being that they possess greater musicianship and technical maturity.

As we focus today on great Bach singers, tell us which you prefer. Below are two "Bach Battles," the first featuring the choice of a female mezzo-soprano and a countertenor; the second offering a female soprano and boy soprano. Tell us your favorite versions in the comments box below.

Bach Battle No. 1

Mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie Von Otter sings St. Matthew Passion: Erbarme dich, mein Gott

OR:

Countertenor Andreas Scholl sings St. Matthew Passion: Erbarme dich, mein Gott

Bach Battle No. 2

Boy Soprano Peter Jelosits sings"Ich bin herrlich, ich bin schon" from the Cantata: Ich geh und suche vit Verlangen, BWV 49:

OR:

Soprano Dorothea Roschmann sings"Ich bin herrlich, ich bin schon" from the Cantata: Ich geh und suche vit Verlangen, BWV 49:

FREE Download: Theorbo Player Hopkinson Smith Plays the Bach Suite No. 1 in G Major BWV 1007, Prelude

Lutenist Hopkinson Smith has transcribed three of Bach's cello suites for the German theorbo in a new recording for Naive. (Available at Arkivmusic.com)

Programming Highlights for Saturday (all times approximate)

7 am Joshua Rifkin’s ensemble performs a mighty cantata in his pioneering “one-on-a-part” style 

8 am Counter-tenor Andreas Scholl delivers a beloved solo cantata

9 am Masaaki Suzuki’s Bach Collegium Japan

10 am Baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and tenor Peter Schreier, who has just been awarded the 2013 Leipzig Bach Medal

11 am Contralto Maureen Forrester in a cantata that features one of Bach’s greatest opening movements

3 pm Contralto Kathleen Ferrier with a Passion aria in English

4 pm Thomas Quasthoff in a beautiful cantata for solo bass

6 pm We compare performances from three different eras in three parts of a major choral masterwork

•         Karl Richter’s Munich Bach Choir/ soloists Gundula Janowitz, Christa Ludwig, and Fritz Wunderlich, and Franz Crass (1960s)
•         John Eliot Gardiner’s Monteverdi Choir/ soloists Nancy Argenta, Anne-Sofie von Otter, Anthony Rolfe-Johnson, and Olaf Bar (1980s)
•         Philippe Herreweghe’s Collegium Vocale/ soloists Barbara Schlick, Michael Chance, Howard Crook, and Peter Kooy  (2011)

7 pm Soprano Emma Kirkby and bass David Thomas in a comic, secular cantata

8 pm Helmut Rilling’s Gachinger Kantorei/ soloists Arleen Auger, Julia Hamari, and Peter Schreier

9 pm Mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson in a solo cantata

10 pm  In 360 style, we circle back to our 7 am cantata to hear a large ensemble performance featuring soloists Soprano Elly Ameling and mezzo-soprano Dame Janet Baker.

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FREE Download: Freiburg Baroque Orchestra plays the Concerto for Three Violins BWV 1064R - Allegro
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Two things are certain about the classical music calendar: Handel at Christmas and Bach at Easter. Of course, Bach wrote a joyous Christmas Oratorio that is also heard in December, but his most celebrated choral works are those of the Easter season: there's not only an Easter Oratorio, but also two passions based on the Crucifixion story, several cantatas, Easter chorales and chorale preludes.

This weekend brings performances of these works to venues throughout the New York area, and it also provides the focus for the final day of WQXR’s Bach 360 festival. Across the pond, meanwhile, the Royal Albert Hall in London is gearing up for a nine-hour Bach Marathon on Monday, led by conductor John Eliot Gardiner.

Bach’s music for Easter is a reminder that portions of his output never survived the centuries. The Easter Oratorio, BWV 249, which he composed in Leipzig and premiered on April 1, 1725, is based on a secular cantata (the so-called Shepherd Cantata) that was lost. The text remained, however, and the work was reconstructed by modern-day scholars.

Similarly, historians believe that Bach set the passion play in five versions (based on the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), yet only the St. Matthew and St. John Passions have survived. Both feature a mix of biblical texts, arias, chorales and choruses based on new liturgical poetry. But while the two passions deal with the same events, they are very different works, reflecting both the biblical text and the fact that Bach wrote the St. John Passion first, in 1724. 

On this Easter, we are thankful for the some 1,100 works of Bach that have survived the centuries and which have supplied us with more than 10 nearly days of truly remarkable music. Last year, choral director and WQXR host Kent Tritle and producer Aaron Cohen gave us some basics about the St. John and St. Matthew Passions with a set of “Passion Pointers.” Listen to them below.

Pointer One: The many types of music to listen for

Pointer Two: Knowing the difference between the St. John and St. Matthew Passions

Pointer Three: The significance of the St. John Passion's many chorales

Pointer Four: The way Bach uses male and female voices

Pointer Five: The history of the St. John Passion's creation

FREE Download: Freiburg Baroque Orchestra plays the Concerto for Three Violins BWV 1064R - Allegro

Some New York area listeners may be familiar with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra from its appearances at the Mostly Mozart Festival in recent years. The group's latest recording features the three Violin Concertos  paired with an enjoyable concerto for three violins, reconstructed from the surviving version for three harpsichords, BWV 1064 (available at Arkivmusic.com).

Programming Highlights for Sunday (all times approximate)

6am Cantata BWV 201, "Geschwinde, ihr wirbelnden Winde"

7am Chorales and a chorale preludes for Easter plus the Orchestral Suite No. 4 in D, BWV 1069

8am Glenn Gould plays the Goldberg Variations

9am  Chorale preludes from the "Neumeister Collection" discovered in 1985, plus the Easter Cantata BWV 4, "Christ lag in Todesbanden

10am   Murray Perahia with a partita, plus the reconstructed Cantata BWV 216,

11am   A chorale prelude and chorales for Easter, plus BWV 1050a, an earlier version of Brandenburg Concerto No. 5

12pm   The Easter Oratorio, BWV 249

1pm    Cantata BWV 31, "Der Himmel lacht! die Erde jubilieret" - written for Easter

2pm    Concerto in D Minor, BWV 1059  (Or is that BWV 105.9?!)

3pm    Chorale preludes and chorales for Easter, plus Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G, BWV 1048

4pm    The strophic aria discovered in 2005, Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn' ihn, BWV 1127

5pm    Cantata BWV 6, "Bleib bei uns" written for Easter Monday and chorale preludes from the "Neumeister Collection," discovered in 1985

6pm    "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," from Cantata BWV 147 and the Trio Sonata from The Musical Offering, BWV 1079

7pm    The organ fantasia discovered in 2008, Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns halt, BWV 1128 (the highest BWV number now in the catalog)

8pm    Violin Concerto No. 2 in E Major, BWV 1042

9pm    Brandenburg No. 2 in F Major, BWV 1047 and the chorale prelude that may have been Bach's last work

10pm   Mass in B Minor, BWV 232

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