Evanston’s Bach Week concert a dazzler

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Richard Webster

Updated: June 6, 2011 12:24PM

Bach Week continues to bloom, perennial as the daffodils, in Evanston, despite the move of its director Richard Webster to Boston.

For the past few years the spring celebration has been confined to two concerts on one weekend, but Webster has continued to plan, rehearse and conduct the programs, plus attract A-list players to his brief festival.

The 38th annual season took place April 29 and May 1 at the Music Institute of Chicago’s Nichols Concert Hall, at the corner of Chicago Avenue and Grove Street.

The Friday night program was a delight. It appropriately included Bach’s Cantata No. 4, one of the many choral pieces he composed for the feast of Easter during his decades as a organist, composer and choir director for churches in Germany.

Soloists were soprano Rosalind Lee, tenor Hoss Brock, and bass Douglas Anderson, with a 33-voice chorus and chamber orchestra. Players Friday night included the ubiquitous Trier sibs, violist Melissa Trier Kirk and double bass Collins Trier, both members of the Lyric Opera Orchestra, as well as Steven Houser, who plays with the Grant Park Symphony, the Ars Viva Orchestra and the Lake Forest Symphony.

The voices of the sopranos in the chorus were exceptionally bright and clear. And the gorgeous orchestration for the soloists included several segments in which their fine voices were united with Trier and Houser playing deep, smooth lines of accompaniment.

The evening opened with Bach’s Concerto for Three Violins, starring — and they are stars — Robert Hanford, Lyric’s concertmaster, Mathias Tacke, formerly second violinist with the Vermeer Quartet until it disbanded in 2007, and Stefan Hersh, soloist and guest artist with many orchestral and chamber groups.

They fully embraced the buoyancy of Bach and the marvelously circuitous flow of his music, which they spun and wove into brilliant threads shining through the rich tapestry of the orchestral sound.

And what is a Bach night without a Brandenburg? In Nichols Hall it was Concerto No. 5, with Hersh as violinist and Alyce Johnson, flute. The two instruments frequently engaged in crisp conversation, but right in the middle was an extended harpsichord solo by the inimitable David Schrader.

Schrader’s work is always dazzling, but Friday night it was virtuosic — filling the acoustically superior hall with music as sparkling as Dom Perignon. He also played either harpsichord or organ throughout the program.

Lest anyone forget that April 29 was the date of a certain wedding in London, Webster added after intermission William Byrd’s short “Sing Joyfully,” which had resonated in Westminster Abbey much, much earlier that very same day.