2025 Charlotte Bach Festival
May 30–June 7, 2025
Feauturing the Bach Akademie Charlotte Choir & Orchestra
Stay tuned for additional repertoire and guest musician announcements. All-Festival Passes on sale soon.
Get ready for what we believe will be the best Charlotte Bach Festival yet, featuring two of classical music’s most beloved and celebrated works: Johann Sebastian Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem—performed on period instruments by our renowned professional vocalists and period instrument specialists.
Bach and Mozart
Bach Akademie Charlotte’s mission is to advance the spirit of community through the legacy of Johann Sebastian Bach’s transformational music. So what is the connection between Bach and Mozart? Mozart famously said, “Bach is the father. We are the children!” When he made that comment to his Vienna patron, Gottfried van Swieten, though, Mozart was not referring to Johann Sebastian Bach, but to Bach’s second son, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. At the time, CPE Bach’s pared-down, melodic galant compositional style was as much in fashion as Johann Sebastian’s dense polyphonic style was out.
But at van Swieten’s musical salon gatherings, Mozart became increasingly fascinated with the “old music” of Johann Sebastian Bach (as well as that of Handel). Mozart’s study of J.S. Bach’s counterpoint included string trio and quartet transcriptions, and Bach’s influence can be heard particularly in such works as Mozart’s“Great” Mass in C minor, the Prelude (Fantasy) and Fugue in C major, and the finale of his Symphony No. 41 (“Jupiter”). As Mozart’s music presaged the Romantic period that followed, Bach’s influence traveled along with it—though Bach’s own music would be ignored until Sarah Levy and her great-nephew Felix Mendelssohn revived it in the 19th century.
OPENING CONCERT: SATURDAY, MAY 31, 2025
Brandenburg Concertos
Sandra Levine Theatre
Sarah Belk Gambrell Center for the Arts and Civic Engagement
Queens University of Charlotte
Bach Akademie Charlotte Orchestra
Groundbreaking in their diversity of invention, Johann Sebastian Bach’s six Brandenburg Concertos (BWV 1046–1051) stand among the greatest creative achievements of the 18th century. Bach’s exploration of innovative combinations of orchestral instruments reveal an astonishing breadth and depth of tonal flavors. Each of the 14 different instruments deployed (with the exception of the double-bass) features as a soloist in at least one of the concertos.
From hunting horns and death-defying trumpet solos to plaintive recorders and wild harpsichord cadenzas, the Brandenburg Concertos reveal Bach’s near-supernatural creative powers. They are some of the liveliest and most colorful orchestral works of their day.
Presented as Six Concerts Avec plusieurs instruments (Six Concertos for several instruments) and dedicated to Christian Ludwig, Margrave (Military Commander) of Brandenburg-Schwedt, Bach’s six concertos were quite likely an attempt to gain employment. Bach presented the concertos in 1721 (though he likely composed them earlier), but it’s conceivable they were performed in Christian Ludwig’s lifetime. The six concertos were sold upon Christian’s death and placed in an attic, and were only re-discovered by a servant who was cleaning the attic—in 1849. Today, the Brandenburg Concertos remain among the most popular orchestral works of the Baroque era—or of any era, for that matter.
CLOSING CONCERT: SATURDAY, JUNE 7, 2025
Mozart Requiem
Sandra Levine Theatre
Sarah Belk Gambrell Center for the Arts and Civic Engagement
Queens University of Charlotte
Bach Akademie Charlotte Choir & Orchestra
In early July 1791, an ‘unknown, gray stranger’ showed up at Mozart’s door, requesting an anonymous commission to compose a Requiem Mass—on the understanding that Mozart not seek to learn the identity of his patron. In ill health and near death, Mozart completed the Requiem and Kyrie movements, and managed to sketch the voice parts and bass lines for the Dies irae through to the Hostias.
The stranger paid for the Requiem in full. But before he could complete the work, Mozart died on December 5, 1791, at the age of 35. His widow Constanze feared that if she handed over an incomplete work, the mystery patron would demand his money back. She asked Joseph Eybler to finish the score, but after orchestrating the music following the Kyrie, Eybler handed it over to Mozart‘s pupil Franz Xaver Süssmayer. Süssmayer completed the work, copying the entire completed score in his own hand.
And the unkown patron? Anton Leitgeb, son of the mayor of Vienna and the valet of Count Franz von Walsegg-Stuppach had a well-earned reputation for promoting other people’s music as his own. The Count was hoping to use Mozart’s Requiem to commemorate his late wife, Anna. It took a decade before Constanze was able to persuade Walsegg to acknowledge Mozart as the Requiem’s true composer. Well, at least part of it, anyway.
