Festival Agenda Gets Bach to Basics

This year marks the 250th anniversary of the death of Johann Sebastian Bach. So expect to hear a lot of Bach at the 20th anniversary Corona del Mar Baroque Music Festival, opening Sunday at St. Michael and All Angels Church. Bach’s music will be on all five festival programs.

But you won’t hear only Bach.

“A totally Bach year would be boring,” festival music director Burton Karson said over lunch recently at a Costa Mesa restaurant.

“I think these concert series that are all Beethoven, all Mozart, are very tedious. That’s not the way to entertain an audience. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for that tedium.”

So Karson has added works by Vivaldi, Telemann, Franck, as well as three modern composers--James Hopkins, Robert Linn and Craig Phillips.

All three contemporary composers wrote works on commission from the festival, a policy begun in 1993 to expand its offerings. All the new pieces have neo-baroque elements, however, so that they fit into the overall theme.

Hopkins’ 1996 “Chorale, Arioso and Gigue on ‘Wachet Auf,’ ” will be played Sunday at the church. Linn’s 1997 “Cantata Jovialis (In Praise of Love and Music)” will be sung Wednesday at Sherman Library and Gardens.

The latest commission, Craig Phillips’ “Partita on ‘Veni Creator Spiritus,”’ will receive its premiere Monday at the church. Phillips, a Los Angeles-based organist and composer, was the organist at the 1995 festival.

Over the years, Bach has been the most frequently played composer in the series, founded by Karson and a colleague at Cal State Fullerton, art professor Irmeli Desenberg, in 1980.

Bach’s music has been played 98 times, counting this season, too, according to Karson. Handel comes next, at 43. Vivaldi, 25. Telemann, 19.

There have been 92 composers from the baroque period. Who could name even a third of them?

But other periods have been represented, as well. The classical period contributed three composers. The romantic, nine. Perhaps most surprising is the number of 20th-century composers: 30.

So the festival has more than filled a gap in what local audiences can hear.

Even more impressive is the fact that it’s all done on an annual budget of about $50,000. The soloists, chorus and orchestra members are paid. Karson is not, although he plans, conducts and writes the program notes. He also assembles the chorus and orchestra.

“I have rehearsals and create an instrument, as it were,” Karson said. “You can’t play on an instrument until you’ve created it.”

The festival will open and close with Bach’s music. And the Friday chamber music program will be entirely devoted to him.

The Friday musicians, incidentally, will perform on modern instruments, while the musicians at the other concerts will play period instruments or replicas.

The festival began using period instruments, with gut strings and low-tension bows, in 1994.

The first piece of the season will be Bach’s Sinfonia in E, BWV 49, a work that uses the organ--Bach was a keyboard virtuoso--as a solo voice against the strings.

The final work of the eight-day festival is Bach’s Cantata No. 19, “Es erhub sich ein Streit,” a work recounting the war in heaven between the loyal and the rebellious angels.

“It’s as dramatic a piece as Bach ever wrote,” Karson said.

There’s also a war in Karson’s mind between how to keep the 20-year-old festival going as it is or whether to expand it. The current two venues do not seat more than about 200 people each.

“I always worry about selling enough tickets, but somehow we do,” he said.

“We’ve thought about other venues, too, but not outside of Newport Beach. I’ve suggested using Newport Harbor High School--it’s a fine little auditorium--and that’s a possibility for next year, even. Or some other places.”

But Karson doesn’t want to expand to large halls. “We created the festival in Newport Beach. We want to stay there. We don’t want to become big. We don’t have any delusions of grandeur,” he said.

Although the festival began when there weren’t other opportunities to hear baroque music live, it’s not the only game in town now.

The eminent San Francisco-based Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra has become a regular visitor. Last year, Orange County audiences also saw William Christie’s Paris-based Les Arts Florissants perform Purcell’s “King Arthur.” In March, Trevor Pinnock’s English Concert came to play Bach’s “Brandenburg” Concertos complete. And that doesn’t exhaust the list.

How does Karson feel about the competition?

“The more the better,” he said. “We don’t get in each other’s way. We might even inspire our audiences to go and see others. We’re very pleased that the Philharmonia Baroque comes down, as long as they don’t play the same week we do.”

Besides, Karson stresses the “intimacy of our beautiful settings” at the church and the Sherman Library and Gardens.

“People have a feeling that’s far different from the Performing Arts Center, and I love the center. I was a founder of it and I’m there all the time. But the feeling is far different.”

* The 20th annual Baroque Music Festival of Corona del Mar opens Sunday, 4 p.m. St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church, 3233 Pacific View Drive, Corona del Mar. Performances will continue Monday through June 25 at the church or at Sherman Library and Gardens, 12645 E. Coast Highway. $10 to $30, depending on the event and the location. (949) 760-7887.

Chris Pasles can be reached at (714) 966-5602 or by e-mail at chris.pasles@latimes.com.