Harpsichordist Carsten Schmidt returns to a favorite project September 29 at 4:00 pm at St. Francis Catholic Church, when he offers four of J.S. Bach’s enigmatic Fantasias and three demanding English Suites in a continuation of The Bach Project.
That’s Schmidt’s massive multi-year undertaking to perform all the keyboard works of Johann Sebastian Bach, now about half accomplished. This concert also marks the first solo appearance of Schmidt’s strikingly beautiful new baroque harpsichord, completed in May in the Netherlands.
Prior to the concert, on Friday September 27 at 7:00 pm, also at St. Francis, Schmidt joins Jason Stell, a music historian who is executive director of the Staunton Music Festival, in an informal discussion and demonstration of how the keyboard suites emerged and developed.
Bach often took what he had received from earlier composers—such as the free-form Fantasia—and adapted it to his own expectations and interests. The Fantasias are early works, often lengthy, contrapuntally rich, and progress through emotionally contrasting moods. The “English” suites are composed of music for varied styles of dancing. Bach wrote suites for orchestra, as well as beloved examples for solo cello, solo violin, and more than twenty for solo keyboard.
Schmidt teaches in New York, performs widely in the U.S. and Europe, and is founding Artistic Director of the annual Staunton Music Festival, an August festival of chamber music that has shown as much as 30% audience growth annually for several years. The Staunton concerts followSchmidt’s summer
in the U.S. and Europe. He makes his home in Staunton.
Tickets are available at Bookworks (101 West Beverley Street), online atstauntonmusicfestival.com (no surcharge), and at the door. Adults $20, Seniors $18, Students $8, sixteen and under entirely free.
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