Make Your Next Portland Baroque Concert a Full Experience!

As a musician, I find myself spending far too much of my time indoors. Harpsichords don’t behave well outdoors, and while I love the idea of perusing my scores in the park, gusts of wind often prove too distracting for me.

But these are feeble excuses. The summer is when I aim to redress this imbalance in my life, and with my extended family in toasty Puglia (on the heel of Italy’s ‘‘boot’’), I have recently enjoyed frequent swims in the Ionian Sea, picking figs on forest walks – and even a spot of yoga in the local piazza. I now feel less like a battery chicken and more in touch with my surroundings. My vitamin D levels have been restored!

So, how can I continue in this vein when we ‘‘return to school’’ this autumn? Can I embrace more of Portland’s beautiful outdoors on my trips over from London? And can I do so without compromising the daily delight of study and practice?

In short, hopefully. As our summer festival season winds down and we return indoors for cultural events, I want to maintain this rediscovered equilibrium with nature. There’s no point pretending that I will be running up Mount Hood on my days off, but it’s the little things that count: extending my walks to rehearsal, centering my breathing, listening to birdsong. In doing so, I hope to arrive back indoors with renewed vigor.

Musically, our imminent season reflects the inexorable cycles of nature. “Grounds for Optimism” celebrates how a repeated bass line forms the backbone to so many Baroque movements, be it a chaconne, ground, ostinato, passacaglia, riff, or other variant. It underpins our programs, from Pachelbel’s Canon and Bach’s Goldberg Variations to a grand Passacaille by Jean-Baptiste Lully.

Is the ground bass not restrictive for a full season? Its strict framework can limit varied phrase lengths and changes of harmony. Why not explore other, freer forms?

The very restrictions of the repeated ground bass provide that creative tension between freedom and discipline. Being rooted to the bass line, melodic soloists have a magnetic pole that gives them the space to discover afresh the improvisational quality that lies at the heart of so much Baroque music. And, rest assured, you won’t be listening solely to ground basses throughout our season! Rather, their stabilizing presence will act in counterpoint to other gems, be it a boisterous bourrée by Handel, a soulful slow movement by C. P. E. Bach, or a lovelorn aria by Alessandro Scarlatti. Perhaps the ground bass can even act as a metaphor for stability amidst life’s challenges.

Experience Grounds for Optimism

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After a busy end of the school year at Indiana University (my eighth year on the Historical Performance faculty at the Jacobs School of Music), I geared up for my summer travel to Sweden and both coasts of the U.S. Many airline miles later, I want to share with you some monthly highlights from those trips.

The first trip was in early May when I traveled to Rochester, NY, to rehearse with Pegasus Early Music for concerts in Ithaca, Rochester, and Syracuse - all cities I had never visited before but would love to visit again. The program was French Baroque music for double reeds, theorbo, bass viol, and percussion. Unbelievably (and with some coercing on the part of my colleagues), I was the one wielding the drum and mallet, leading the concert processional and recessional pieces. There is a first time for everything.

Later in the month, I performed a program featuring the music of Portuguese Renaissance composer Vicente Lusitano with Alchemy Viols, along with wonderful guest vocalists at the Bloomington Early Music Festival. The only concert this summer where I did not need to pack a suitcase!

In June, my husband and I took a family trip to Sweden to visit my aunts, uncles, and cousins for 12 action-packed days. After recovering from the jet lag, my first musical business in July was teaching at the Port Townsend Early Music Workshop in Tacoma, WA at the University of Puget Sound. I spent most of a week coaching Renaissance consort music dear to my heart. Next, I performed on the San Francisco Early Music Society series with Wildcat Viols, collaborating with the English vocal ensemble Gesualdo Six on a program called Secret Byrd. We played by candlelight at the beautiful Grace Cathedral.

After two days of repacking and resting back in Bloomington, I flew back to Seattle to perform at the Tacoma Bach Festival, the Whidbey Island Music Festival, as well as the Seattle Bach Festival – the latter was complete with festive food and miniature horses!

August promises to be busy with the Montana Baroque Music Festival in Paradise, MT, featuring three consecutive nights of concerts alongside my fabulous PBO colleagues and guests. Then I head home to Bloomington to prepare for the start of the fall semester at IU and the upcoming PBO season. It will be an exciting concert season with many opportunities to collaborate with my dream continuo team in Portland! For me, playing bass lines in Baroque music is my “happy place” with ever-changing harmonies and the dynamic variances they require. This will be the focus of the first program of the season, called Ground Bass, named after one of the most iconic forms of music with a repeating bass line chosen by composers like Purcell, Albinoni, Vivaldi, and Handel. It will be up to us in the continuo section to give the maximum variance to these repetitions!

Excited to hear Joanna and the season opener, Ground Bass?

Dates:
October 18 | 7:00 PM | Sanctuary Hall at First Congregational
October 19 | 3:00 PM | Kaul Auditorium
Tickets are on sale now!

And, as always, season subscribers get the best deals and PBO exclusives, so if you aren’t a subscriber yet, there is still time to sign up!

For a work shrouded in mystery and long presumed lost, J.S. Bach’s Markus Passion continues to provoke questions, curiosity, and creative reconstruction. In his illuminating program notes, producer Malcolm Bruno invites us into the fascinating editorial journey behind this performance—a journey shaped by historical fragments, speculative scholarship, and reverent imagination. With only a libretto, a handful of parodied arias, and no surviving score, Bruno navigates the delicate balance between honoring Bach’s original intentions and crafting a dramatically coherent experience for modern audiences. His notes not only trace the Passion’s complicated afterlife but also offer a window into the artistic decisions that bring this rare and powerful work back to life.

Program Notes:

Well before the Reformation, the portions of the gospels depicting the final days of the earthly life of Jesus – of his betrayal, trial, and death – had become a fixture of the liturgy of Holy Week, and one, uniquely, that could have dramatic expression. Collaborating with his librettist ‘Picander’ (Christian Friedrich Henrici 1700-1764) Bach elevated this dramatic form to satisfy his own needs and imagination: his settings, with full orchestral accompaniment (less brass and timpani) becoming oratorios on an operatic scale.

In first the Johannes-Passion (1724) and then the Matthäus Passion (1729), Bach was able to develop his own dramatic form using new texts for arias and choruses, alongside the biblical text in recitative and turba scenes punctuated by chorales. The Markus-Passion was first performed in 1731. Aside from another documented performance in 1744, it next appeared 20 years later in a posthumous inventory of Bach’s manuscripts delivered to his publisher Johann Breitkopf by his son Carl Philip Emanuel. It then, sadly, vanished from any record. 

A century later in 1873 Wilhelm Rust, one of Bach’s successors at the Leipzig Thomas Kirche, at work as an editor of the centennial (1850) Bach Gesellschaft edition, discovered not a manuscript or early edition of the Markus, but its instrumental incipit (listing). It contained the unusual requirement for two violas da gamba and two lutes. In the absence of a manuscript or musical source but with an extant copy of Picander’s libretto to hand, Rust wondered – with its unique instrumentation – whether the music for this Passion might have been reworked from an earlier cantata. Using the libretto he was soon able to show that the Markus was indeed in large measure a parody of the Trauerode (BWV 198). Scansion of the text from this earlier work, showed a perfect fit for the opening and closing choruses and three of its arias as parodies of the parallel movements. A few decades after Rust’s work, a further parodied aria from Cantata 54, followed as the strongest contender for the music of the aria ‘Falsche Welt’.

Rust’s unpublished investigations led to the first ‘complete’ publication in 1964 of all the known parodied movements revealing both the beauty and potential of the Markus. It also laid bare the considerable practical problems for performance in the manner of the Johannes and Matthäus Passions given the incomplete state of the material. Huge musical-dramatic gaps from the lost recitativo and turba cori (whose unique texts could never have been parodied) along with a lop-sided order of high-voiced arias and an abundance of chorales specified in the libretto (16, which is four more than contained in the grand scale Matthäus) left a stilted glimpse of this masterpiece.

Now, more than sixty years on the editorial question remains: should a reconstructed Markus simply offer the known remains of the original work or should a completed performing edition use the libretto as a template, filling in the gaps with music from other sources, whether by Bach or his contemporaries? 

And what should be done if no suitable parody material is available for the missing aria texts? How should an editor deal with the missing and essential biblical text (the non-aria/ chorale material)? Should new material be composed? What must the guidelines be in creating a performing version? In short: Should the blueprint for rebuilding be solely the libretto by Picander? Should music other than Bach’s be employed? How invasive should the editor’s hand be in melding together?

With these questions in mind the present re-construction has been guided by the following premises:

Text

As the symbiotic relation of the original recitativo-turbachorale has vanished, and if it is accepted that this crucial element of the Passion is not replaceable – either by contemporary pastiche or by recycling of parallel material from the other Bach Passions or by importation of musical setting of the same text from other composers – we are left with the possibility of a dramatic production, harkening back to the earliest of Lutheran traditions, with the biblical text spoken. 

Arias

In his Markus libretto for Bach’s original Picander included six arias. Using parody, we have music, all but universally accepted, for four. For the remaining two ‘Angenehmes Mordgeschrei’ and ‘Welt und Himmel’ various possibilities for parody or pastiche/arrangement have been proposed. Musical parody for the text of ‘Angenehmes Mordgeschrei’ remains inconclusive, while the match drawn from Cantata 120a for ‘Welt und Himmel’ proposed in 1964 – though not authoritatively confirmed as Bach’s initial choice – is appealing not least with its virtuosic solo violin offering an obvious association with ‘Erbarme dich’. Putting aside ‘Angenehmes Mordgeschrei’, we turn to the number and placement of the remaining arias. The Trauerode as template provides music for three arias (one each for soprano, alto and tenor), but with none for the bass. Adding the ‘Falsche Welt’ parody provides a second aria for the alto; with ‘Welt und Himmel’ there is a substantial second aria for the soprano. Bach however would not have left the bass voice unrepresented in a Passion. Dispensing with parody, two bass arias from other cantatas offer an ideal solution: ‘Herr so du willt’ after the prayer in Gethsemane (from Cantata 73) and the less familiar ‘Es is volbracht’ setting (from Cantata 159) as a meditation immediately after the death of Jesus, the climax of the entire Passion. Although these particular arias are not part of Picander’s original libretto, they fit Bach’s dramatic/ musical scheme quite perfectly; and to this end a further aria for the tenor can be provided with the little-known alternative ‘Erbarme dich’ setting from Cantata 55.

Chorus and Chorale

The Trauerode provides not only an opening and closing chorus for the Markus, but an additional central chorus with no apparent parallel text from Picander. Accommodating it with a (funereal) Psalm text, however, it serves perfectly as a chorus to conclude the first part. Conversely, the plethora of chorales in the original text, however they might have worked in Bach’s original plan, makes no musical sense when individual chorales appear as detached musical items paired with spoken text (their initial function to punctuate a sequence of recitative, turba and aria). Though their number has been pruned significantly, in the manner of Bach’s cantatas and oratorios, sinfonie have been included at major dramatic points in both first and second parts of the Passion. These function within the flow of the spoken narrative as chorale substitutes, rather for dramatic than historic purposes. Similarly, at the Passion’s midpoint, occupied in Bach’s day by a sermon, a further optional short sinfonia has been offered, as an overture to part two. Both ‘signature’ chorales ‘Petrus, der nicht denkt zurück’ and ‘O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden’ as points of reference to respectively the Johannes and Matthäus Passions have intentionally been selected from the longer initial set of chorales.

—Malcolm Bruno

Julian Perkins talks with Malcolm Bruno ahead of PBO’s performance of his reconstruction of Bach’s Markus Passion on July 12. This forms part of a tour in collaboration with the Oregon Bach Festival and Concert Theatre Works. Featuring famed actor Joseph Marcell in the spoken role of Evangelist, this passion is lean and mean – just four singers, single strings, and winds. A “Pocket Passion”, you could say.

JP: For centuries, Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and St. John Passion have stood as pillars of sacred music, performed and revered worldwide. But what about this other Passion – the one that nearly vanished into obscurity?

MB: The annual Good Friday Passion was a fixture of Bach’s Leipzig liturgical year. The first performance of the St. John Passion in 1724, Bach’s first year at Leipzig, set the stage for his other Passions, particularly and for Bach’s dramatic talent generally, as the city authorities forbade the Thomaskirche cantor to indulge in the writing of opera.

JP: The Markus Passion is a fascinating work that you have recently pieced together and brought back to life. Can you tell us more about this?

MB: Bach performed Passions by other composers as well as his own, encompassing all four versions of the Passion story (one for each gospel). His great St. Matthew Passion, using double choir, was first performed in 1727, while the St. John was given at least four times during Bach’s lifetime. The Bach Passion archives also include a St. Luke Passion, which Bach copied but did not himself compose, as well as a reference to a St. Mark Passion composed by him and first performed in 1731.  This work was, however, lost between Bach’s death in 1750 and the publication of his complete works, begun a century later, in 1850.

Since the late nineteenth century scholars have been almost unanimous in agreeing that this St. Mark Passion was largely a recycling of music from a funeral ode which Bach had previously composed, in 1727, in celebration of the life of his Patron’s wife, the Electress of Saxony. The earlier work is, however, conspicuously shorter than the St. Mark Passion, whose libretto has survived independently without music. The tantalising task for anybody wanting to reconstruct this lost masterpiece is thus how to restore it without overwhelming those genuine if skeletal movements that remain. Based on this funeral ode, the St. Mark, unlike Bach’s other, very public Passions, retains the private, personal character of the work from which it originated. Indeed, it is one of the most intimate of Bach’s public works.

JP: Now, a groundbreaking production of this overlooked masterpiece is making its way from the UK to the US, forging powerful partnerships with early music organizations across the country. Because each leg of the tour has a different director, do you think each audience will get something unique from it?

MB: Bach’s creativity, like Shakespeare’s, reaches far beyond any single realisation, any single period’s performing traditions. As its editor and reconstructor I rejoice that some of the finest advocates of baroque music in America will be exploring my realisation. I look forward this year to performances in New York and Pittsburgh and on the west coast in Eugene, Portland, and Seattle, as well as in Aldeburgh and Edinburgh in the UK. They will each have their distinctive character, of course.

JP: Bringing this lost work back to life is more than an academic exercise: it’s an act of cultural rediscovery. At a time when audiences crave both tradition and innovation, your version of the St. Mark Passion offers a fresh yet historically grounded experience. It invites us to rethink what we know about Bach’s musical world and to consider how forgotten works can find new resonance in modern times.

MB: For me, aside from the joy of stepping into an imagined landscape of Bach’s Passions, the chance to hear an actor cast as the Evangelist is very special and powerful for contemporary audiences. As all of Bach’s music for the sung part of the role of the Evangelist in this Passion is lost, the challenge for an editor is how to restore and integrate this essential biblical text, which tells the dramatic story of the final days and hours of Jesus’s life. I have turned away from composing pastiche because I believe that option takes us too far from Bach’s music and imagination. There are also actors replacing what would have been the vocal soloists for Bach’s original ‘crowd choir’. Each actor has one foot firmly planted in Bach’s original St. Mark Passion, but the other in our world. They speak to us in our own language, as if the Passion is happening now rather than within the liturgy of eighteenth-century Leipzig, and so they liberate the music. It becomes more direct and powerful, freed from the world of German Pietism.

The English text, which I commissioned from Jessica Gordon, consciously avoids the archaic grandeur of the King James Bible while remaining elevated from everyday language, a poetic contemporary/twentieth-century English, from the world of a Yeats or an Eliot or a Woolf. And as the Passion story proceeds, an actor such as Joseph Marcell compels us to ask ourselves whether this is a play come musical with music by Bach or a Passion by Bach moved from pulpit to stage. The synergy of classical actor and fine consort singers gives us a new and, I hope, compelling way into this unknown Passion.

-Text edited by Stephen Pettitt

EVENT:

Markus Passion

July 12, 2025 | 7:00 PM
First United Methodist Church
1838 SW Jefferson St
Portland, OR 97201
Tickets on sale here!

WATCH: Julian Perkins’ introduction to Markus Passion

As the curtain falls on Portland Baroque Orchestra’s remarkable Season of Seasons, we invite you to join us for a breathtaking grand finale. Our final concert is a profound journey through the emotional and musical landscapes of the Baroque period, culminating in Giovanni Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater and the electrifying “Summer” from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons – a fitting tribute to the 300th anniversary of its publication.

This concert explores the powerful intersection of sacred and secular music that defined the Baroque era. Alessandro Scarlatti, a towering figure of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, set new standards in sacred music by blending operatic drama with religious texts. We open the program with the instrumental sinfonia from his Lenten oratorio Il Dolore de Maria Vergine – a work that foreshadows the classical symphony. His Salve Regina in G Minor follows an exquisite cantata that showcases Scarlatti’s gift for lyrical expression through the beauty of the da capo aria.

Also featured is an elegant aria by Johann Sebastian Bach, adapted from a passion oratorio by Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel. This meditative piece reflects Bach’s mature style with its graceful vocal line and expressive word painting, offering a moment of serenity and spiritual depth.

The concert’s first half brings the triumphant conclusion of our year-long traversal of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons with “Summer.” Vivaldi’s vivid musical storytelling captures the heat of the sun, the songs of birds, and the ferocity of a sudden summer storm in a dazzling display of virtuosity and imagination.

Finally, we present Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, a masterpiece of the Galant style. This deeply expressive work portrays the Virgin Mary’s grief with aching beauty and emotional intensity. Pergolesi’s music, with its soaring melodies and poignant harmonies, closes our season on a note of profound reflection and transcendent beauty.

Join us for this extraordinary evening as we celebrate the enduring power of Baroque music, from its dramatic beginnings to the dawn of a new musical era. You won’t want to miss this unforgettable conclusion to the Season of Seasons.

As spring approaches, Portland Baroque Orchestra is delighted to progress through Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons on this 300th anniversary of its publishing. The next orchestra concert (March 15 & 16) will feature the beloved concerto, “Spring,” which is filled with vibrant energy, from the joyful songs of birds to the gentle murmuring of streams.

Our violin soloist for this piece, Toma Iliev, will bring his unique artistry to this timeless work. We asked him about his first experience playing The Four Seasons, how his instrument shapes his interpretation, and what excites him about performing “Spring’“ in Portland. Read on to hear Toma’s thoughts on Vivaldi’s enduring masterpiece and the beauty of this season’s return.

Q: The Four Seasons is one of the most well-known pieces in classical music. What is it like to step into the role of soloist for “Spring”?
Toma: It’s a very exciting experience! I love Spring in particular for the jaunty character of the opening Allegro, the lyrical and nostalgic Largo and the rustic dances of the final movement.

Q: Do you remember the first time you played any of The Four Seasons? What was that experience like for you?
Toma: I don’t; it really feels like I’ve known The Four Seasons all my life! I have always loved The Seasons and I have favorite recordings that I go back to when I need inspiration - among them is PBO’s former artistic director Monica Huggett’s.

Q: Vivaldi’s “Spring” feels so fresh and full of life. What do you think makes this music so timeless and evocative?
Toma: One of my favorite things about The Seasons is Vivaldi’s choice to include sonnets to go with each season. These sonnets are very descriptive of what each section of the music is supposed to depict. I think a lot of that full-of-life feeling “Spring” evokes comes from its sonnet - it describes bird songs, a quick storm, a goatherd sleeping with his faithful dog by his side, and then nymphs and shepherds dancing by the sounds of bagpipes.

Q: What instrument will you be performing “Spring” on, and is there anything special about it that influences your interpretation of the piece?
Toma: I will be playing my Viennese violin made by an unknown maker in the 1700s. It has a beautiful, rounded, old-instrument sound, but it also packs a punch in the top register. Playing it gets me as close to bringing my inner voice out as possible (I am not a great singer!). I think my instrument is perfect for “Spring” as its versatility lets it imitate the full range of sounds - from cheerful bird calls to rustic bagpipes.

Q: Portland has its own unique way of welcoming spring. How does the season here inspire you as a musician?
Toma: Spring is my favorite season in Portland! I love all the spring bloom colors and flower scents you experience just walking down the street during these months. And of course the sun coming out after months of rain is a treat! Images of nature pop into my imagination a lot when I perform, especially a piece so akin to nature as Vivaldi’s “Spring.”

Q: As a soloist, how do you bring your own interpretation to such a famous piece while staying true to Vivaldi’s vision?
Toma: I always try to approach famous music I’m learning as if I am hearing it for the very first time. This approach makes it possible to start from scratch rather than build upon all the live performances and recordings I’ve heard over the years. And when it comes to staying true to Vivaldi’s vision, while nobody has a full grasp of it, having training in historically informed performance is of tremendous help with the musical language Vivaldi “spoke.”

Q: If you could pair “Spring” with another piece of music—Baroque or modern—to complement its energy and themes, what would you choose and why?
Toma: There are so many good pairings possible, the most obvious being the other three seasons. But as a piece of music it is so perfect on its own that it makes me want to pair it with sparkling rosé or sangria under the sun on a warm day instead.

Event Details:

Spring
March 15th | 7PM | First Congregational Church
March 16th | 3PM | Kaul Auditorium
Tickets are still available here

Imagine stepping into an elegant hall, sunlight streaming through stained glass, as the resonant call of a Baroque hunting horn fills the air. For one afternoon only, on Saturday, March 8, 2025, at 3 PM, the Portland Baroque Orchestra invites you to Sanctuary Hall for The Hunting Horn: Handel, Couperin & Bach, a concert showcasing the regal beauty and rich history of the hunting horn.

A Noble Instrument with a Story to Tell

Far from its roots on the hunt, the Baroque hunting horn became a symbol of sophistication and nobility, gracing intimate chambers where Europe’s elites sought to dazzle their guests. In the 18th century, chamber music wasn’t just art but diplomacy. Ensembles featuring rare instruments like the hunting horn sent a message: this court knew how to impress.
Now, you can experience the same magic, as this one-of-a-kind concert explores pieces by Handel, Telemann, Fasch, and Bach, where the horn plays an enchanting role.

Music Fit for Royals

Highlights include Fasch’s Sonata in F Major, a work that begins with a stately introduction before leaping into a lively, triple-time finale. In Telemann’s Trio in F Major, the horn’s warm, golden tones weave through delicate violin and continuo lines, creating a soundscape as vibrant as it is refined.
Bach’s Sonata for violin and continuo in E Minor offers a more introspective moment, with its haunting opening described as “profound, pensive, and sad,” yet leaving room for hope—a poignant reminder of music’s emotional power.

Why You Can’t Miss It

This is not just a concert; it’s an invitation to experience history. Sanctuary Hall’s intimate setting will bring you closer to the shimmering tones of these Baroque instruments, much like listeners centuries ago gathered around candlelit music stands.
Perfect for anyone who loves the thrill of discovering rare music or the elegance of bygone eras, The Hunting Horn promises an afternoon of beauty, connection, and inspiration.

Seats are limited—reserve yours today for this one-time performance on Saturday, March 8 at 3 PM.