American Symphony Orchestra Presents Bach at St. Bart’s on January 24 at St. Bartholomew's Church

Music Director Leon Botstein conducts the American Symphony Orchestra (ASO) with the Bard Festival Chorale in an all-C.P.E. Bach concert at St. Bartholomew’s Church, a National Historic Landmark, on Friday, January 24 at 8 PM. The Bach at St. Bart’s program offers the U.S. premiere of one of the composer’s only three oratorios, Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu.

Appearing as soloist in C.P.E. Bach’s choral work, Heilig is mezzo-soprano Leah Wool, a Santa Fe Opera Judith Raskin Memorial Award-winner who recently joined the San Francisco, Indianapolis, and Jacksonville Symphonies for Handel’s Messiah. Featured soloists in the U.S. premiere of Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu are soprano Mei Gui Zhang, who returns to the  Metropolitan Opera as Barbarina in Le nozze di Figaro in spring 2025; tenor Terrence Chin-Loy, who makes his European debut this season singing Gualtiero in Vivaldi’s Griselda with the Danish National Opera; and baritone Troy Cook, who created the role of Father Palmer in the world premiere of the Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Silent Night with Minnesota Opera.

Established in 1835, St. Bartholomew’s Church and the ASO share a deep historical connection. ASO founder Leopold Stokowski began his American career in 1905 as organist and choirmaster of St. Bartholomew’s before creating the Orchestra in 1962.

The ASO’s next concert is Tapping into the Twenties, featuring works by John Alden Carpenter, Erwin Schulhoff, William Grant Still, and Edgard Varèse with pianist Orion Weiss at Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall on March 23, 2025.

Bach at St. Bart’s
Friday, January 24, 2025, at 8 pm, St. Bartholomew’s Church, 325 Park Avenue
Pre-concert Talk at 7 pm
American Symphony Orchestra
Leon Botstein, conductor
Leah Wool, mezzo-soprano
Mei Gui Zhang, soprano
Terrence Chin-Loy, tenor
Troy Cook, baritone
Bard Festival Chorale
James Bagwell, music director of the Bard Festival Chorale
C.P.E. Bach: Heilig, H.775 (1776)
C.P.E. Bach: Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu, H.777 (1774-78) (U.S. premiere)

Long associated with the instrumental genre, Carl Phillipp Emanuel Bach’s keyboard sonatas, trio sonatas, concertos, and symphonies earned him a leading position in the period bridging the Baroque and Classical eras. His vocal compositions are lesser-known and his oratorios are rarely, if ever, presented. Marking a U.S. premiere, the ASO presents his oratorio Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu (The Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus). First performed during Easter in 1774, the score illustrates some of the unique features of the Rococo period, such as abrupt changes in mood, fluid dynamics, and highly chromatic harmonic writing, that point to the more passionate flavor of the Romantic period. The program also includes C.P.E. Bach’s 1776 choral work Heilig mit zwei Chören und einer Ariette zur Einleitung (Heilig with Two Choirs and an Ariette as an Introduction), a work of which he thought highly, writing that the composition may ensure that he would not be too quickly forgotten after his death.

Carl Philipp Emanuel was born in Weimar, Germany, in 1714, the second son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Maria Barbara Bach. After training in Leipzig and Frankfurt, he joined the music establishment of Frederick II of Prussia around 1740 and succeeded his godfather Georg Philipp Telemann as music director in Hamburg in 1768. Haydn, Mozart (who led three performances of Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu), and Beethoven (who performed Heilig at one of his concerts) all admired C.P.E. Bach.

Presented in collaboration with the Mid-Manhattan Performing Arts Foundation.

Tickets, priced at $25-$45, are available at americansymphony.org.