The New England Bach Festival has been called Armidale's best kept-secret - but music lovers from as far as Brisbane and Melbourne come to the biennial celebration of one of the titans of Western music.
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The state government has provided $15,000 to the tenth festival in early May - and artistic director Benjamin Thorn is delighted.
"Having a grant means we can afford to bring people in from outside, and have slightly bigger groups," Dr Thorn said. "Whereas in the last festival, we ran it on the smell of an oily rag."
Northern Tablelands MP Adam Marshall said he was pleased the state government recognised Armidale's abundant musical talent by supporting the event. "Just like the music of the Baroque period, the New England Bach Festival is proving it only gets better with age."
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Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) is the source from which German music flows; Beethoven called him the immortal god of harmony; Wagner hailed him as the most stupendous miracle in all music; while Schumann thought music owed as much to Bach as religion to its founder.
Bach appeals at different levels, Dr Thorn mused. "He wrote some of the most identifiable tunes and melodies that people recognize. Everyone knows Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring, for instance, but at the same time he also has an intellectual rigour. His music is always really well constructed. It's not just surface; there's some substance to it."
This year's festival offers different approaches to Bach's music, from cantatas and organ and harpsichord concerts to improvisation and Baroque jazz fusion. The festival will also present the music of Bach's numerous progeny, contemporaries like Handel and Scarlatti, and a 17th century songbook.
"Festivals are great because you can let yourself be immersed in the music," Dr Thorn said.
The festival program starts on Thursday, May 7, with the Sydney Consort performing the Bach family's music for violin, recorder, and harpsichord. This is the last chance to hear the early music group, who have chosen Armidale for their farewell concert before retiring.
Friday, May 8, will feature an improvised organ recital by David Drury at the Uniting Church. He has won international improvisation competitions, and is the only Australian to receive the 'Tournemire prize' for improvisation at the St Alban's International Organ Competition.
"David is a fantastic improviser," Dr Thorn said. "A few festivals ago, we presented him with some tunes written by local schoolkids. What he did with them - people just went: WOW! And the sounds he can get out of any organ! He's an amazing performer."
The day ends with Shaun Ng (viola da gamba) and Diana Weston (clavier) playing sonatas by Bach, sons C.P.E. and J.C., and gambist Carl Friedrich Abel.
The public can come to a free performance of the Peasant Cantata in Hanna's Arcade on Saturday morning, May 9. The piece is all about the evils of the taxman - more than 200 years before the Beatles.
"It's still relevant," Dr Thorn said. "The problem in the Peasant Cantata is that the landlord's OK, but the taxman's a bastard - which, let's face it, is probably part of the human condition."
Stephen Tafra and Stephen Thorneycroft (EphenStephen) will perform their arrangements of Bach's Italian Concerto, Handel's Water Music, and Scarlatti sonatas on the guitar. "What they like about the Bach festival is it gives them the opportunity to drag out some new repertoire," Dr Thorn said.
Saturday afternoon features the famous Armidale Organ Crawl: four organists, four organs, four programs in two hours. "The organ crawl is always a fantastic experience," Dr Thorn said. "It's something you can't get anywhere else."
Armidale has four historic organs almost within a block, at the Uniting Church, St Paul's Presbyterian Church, St Peter's Anglican Church, and Sts Mary and Joseph Catholic Cathedral. "The organ crawl," Dr Thorn said, "is like a pub crawl, except instead of having a beer in each pub, you have a 20-minute organ recital." A good way of getting drunk on music (although Bach would probably have preferred coffee to beer).
In the evening, Austral Harmony will perform Bach and Florid Song, a concert of 'floral themes, flowery language, florid obbligatos, and intricately ornamented song', at TAS Memorial Hall , featuring soprano Anna Sandstrom and the school organ.
"TAS's electronic organ is really a remarkable instrument because it can be made to sound like anything like almost any organ in the world," Dr Thorn said. As an early music group, Austral Harmony want to play at low (Baroque) pitch, a semitone lower than the modern standard concert pitch.
Anna Sandstrom will return for a lunchtime recital concert with Camerata Antica on Sunday morning, May 10, focusing on an obscure songbook from the 17th century published by one Carlo G. "No one quite knows who he is," Dr Thorn said. The concert features a cornetto, "a sort of cross between a trumpet and a recorder".
The final concert is Bach and the Edge of Sky - a jazz fusion approach to Bach. "We did this in the last festival with our Sky tribute concert," Dr Thorn said. "It's really important to have different approaches to the music, because we need to appeal to a wider public."
The festival ends with Evensong at St Peter's Anglican Cathedral. "We give some of Bach's sacred music in the context it was written - which is actually a church service," Dr Thorn said. Bach, of course, wrote many of his finest pieces for congregations in Thuringia and Leipzig - many perhaps unaware their local musician was one of the great creative figures in music.
The New England Bach Festival runs from May 7-10. Tickets are available from TryBooking (search for NEBF), the Regional Australia Bank, or by post to 21 North Street, Armidale, NSW 2350.
For more information, visit www.ne-bach-festival-com, www.facebook.com/NewEnglandBachFestival/, or email benjaminthorn@bigpond.com.