“You may never hear Bach the same way again. Not if you attend the event announced Tuesday by the Cleveland Orchestra and the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage,” writes Zachary Lewis in Tuesday’s (1/10) Plain Dealer (Cleveland). “On Sunday, March 5, Cleveland Orchestra music director Franz Welser-Möst will preface his spring performances of Bach’s St. John Passion with a panel discussion titled ‘Is Bach’s St. John Passion Anti-Semitic?’ The event … at Temple-Tifereth Israel … is free and open to the public…. The panel will seek to answer a question long asked about the St. John Passion, one of Bach’s greatest and most dramatic but also most controversial works…. Welser-Möst will headline the discussion along with Rabbi Roger Klein, associate rabbi at Temple-Tifereth Israel, and Michael Marissen, professor emeritus of music at Swarthmore College and author of ‘Bach and God.’ David Rothenberg, chair of the music department at Case Western Reserve University, will moderate…. Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra are slated to perform the St. John Passion [in March] at Severance Hall [with] the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus; tenors Maximilian Schmitt and Nicholas Phan; bass-baritones Andrew Foster-Williams and Michael Sumuel; soprano Lauren Snouffer; and counter-tenor Iestyn Davies.”
Posted January 11, 2017
