Juno Orchestra: Bach!

Juno Orchestra presents “Bach!”, a program that includes one of his best-known works, as well as selections from his son and other composers.

Now in its second season as a BMC program, Juno, the region’s home town chamber orchestra, charts new territory while amplifying long-time musical influences and bringing together some of the area’s finest classical players.

The program features Johann Sebastian Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins, the master’s quintessential and compelling work familiar to many audiences. According to Juno Music Director Zon Eastes, the concerto is among six he wrote as a young man while employed by Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen. He had not yet begun his monumental cycles of great sacred cantata and passions, but over the next six years, he produced the Brandenburg Concertos as well as the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier and the four Orchestral Suites.

Featured performers are violinists Kathy Andrew and Ryan Shannon, and Eastes explains “working with them is one of my chief musical pleasures. Each is a remarkable, willing artist. So very generous in spirit.”

Also on the program is Sinfonia in A Major, Wq, 182, No. 4, by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, one of J.S. Bach’s four musical sons and godson of Georg Philipp Telemann. As music director for the city of Hamburg, the younger Bach composed six string symphonies. Unpublished during his lifetime, these stunning works reveal Bach’s compositional mastery as well as his expressive and quirky character.

Juno Orchestra also presents three arias by George Frideric Handel, “each a gem,” says Eastes. “The arias come from across Handel’s chronology, one from an early Italian opera and two form later oratorios first presented in London. Performing these works will be soprano Junko Watanabe. “It is a great pleasure to work with Junko,” says Eastes. “Her crystalline, disciplined voice is perfect for Handel.”

Rounding out the afternoon’s offerings is Telemann’s Burlesque de Quixote, TWV 55: G10, “a work, full of character and humor that paints a completely winning picture of the daily life of one of literature’s earliest heroes, Don Quixote,” says Eastes.