Bach Festival

2020 Subscription Pricing:

Includes 3 Concerts: Friday, April 24 at 7 p.m. at Baldwin Wallace; Saturday, April 25 at 2 p.m. at the Cleveland Museum of Art and at 7 p.m. at the Maltz Performing Arts Center.
Available only by calling the BW ticket office at (440) 826-8070.

Family: $160/145/120
Public: $175/160/135

2020 Single Ticket Pricing:

Friday, April 24 at 7 p.m. – BWV: Cleveland’s Bach Choir at Baldwin Wallace: available by visiting bw.edu/tickets or by calling the BW ticket office at (440) 826-8070.
Saturday, April 25 at 2 p.m. – Chamber Music at the Cleveland Museum of Art: available by visiting bw.edu/tickets or by calling the BW ticket office at (440) 826-8070.
Saturday, April 25 at 7 p.m. – St. Matthew Passion at the Maltz Performing Arts Center: available by visiting case.edu/maltzcenter/bachfestival or by calling the Maltz PAC at (216) 368-6062.

Friday, April 24 at 7 p.m.
Family: $50/42/34
Public: $60/52/44

Saturday, April 25 at 2 p.m.
Family: $50/42/34
Public: $60/52/44

Saturday, April 25 at 7 p.m. (St. Matthew)
Family: $75/67/59
Public: $80/71/62

(Family = alumni, faculty, staff or family of current student)

Saturday Bus to University Circle

$20/rider
Available beginning Monday, March 2 by visiting bw.edu/tickets or calling (440) 826-8070.
Let us do the driving and parking! A charter bus will depart Berea for University Circle at 12:30 p.m. Guests will attend both the 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. concerts (please purchase tickets separately) with dinner on your own in between. Additional details will be provided in advance.

Group Discounts

Groups of 10 or more can take advantage of a 25% discount off subscription prices or single tickets. For additional ticket and group information, please call the Conservatory Events Office at (440) 826-8070 or email bachfest@bw.edu.

Waiting List for Single Tickets

Should a concert be sold out, you may add your name to the waiting list for tickets to an individual concert. Waiting list patrons will be contacted by phone as tickets become available. Please contact the Conservatory Events Office at (440) 826-8070 or email bachfest@bw.edu to place your name on a waiting list.

Gamble Auditorium/Baldwin Wallace

Free parking is available on Front, Seminary and Church Streets. Free municipal parking lots are available adjacent to Giant Eagle, across from the Berea Post Office and by the Berea Public Library. View a parking map.

Gartner Auditorium/Cleveland Museum of Art

The Museum parking garage entrance is on Jeptha Drive. Parking is $10 for up to 2 hours and can be paid at the interior tunnel pay station (cash or credit card), the north entrance vestibule (credit card only), the automated parking lot exit booth (credit card only) or the manned parking lot booth (cash or credit card). For more information visit, clevelandart.org/visit/directions-and-parking/parking.

Maltz Performing Arts Center

Parking is available at 1855 Ansel Road (enter from E. 101st Street). The approach from E. 105th Street/Ansel Road is reserved for ADA patrons and shuttles only. Parking is $7 per car and can be paid onsite (cash or credit card) or a parking pass can be purchased ahead of time by calling (216) 368-6062. For more information visit, case.edu/maltzcenter/plan-your-visit/directions-parking.

Bus to University Circle

Let BW do the driving and parking! A charter bus will depart Berea for University Circle at 12:30 p.m. Guests can attend both the 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. concerts (please purchase tickets separately) with dinner on their own in between. Additional details will be provided in advance. Cost is $20 per rider. 

You can request to be added to the Bach Festival mailing list by contacting the Conservatory events office at (440) 826-8070, emailing bachfest@bw.edu or filling out our online form.

The Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival – the oldest collegiate Bach festival in the nation – was founded in 1932 by Professor Albert Riemenschneider (longtime director of the BW Conservatory) and his wife, Selma. The Baldwin Wallace Festival Choir and Orchestra presented the first Bach Festival in June 1933, and we've been performing annual Bach festivals ever since. In the current era, the festival is evolving to include year-round events, like Bach Haus, that explore Bach's influence on a broad spectrum of music.

Baldwin Wallace performing groups are joined by faculty members and professional musicians in the three-day, multi-event program. Soloists are internationally known artists; the lecturers, distinguished Bach and Baroque scholars. Our students consider the unusual opportunity of participating, as colleagues, with world-class professionals a high point in their performing experience.

Beginning with the 43rd festival in 1975, the festival performing groups have been reduced to sizes now known to be more in line with those employed in Bach's time. Likewise, from 1975 on, all vocal works have been sung in the language of their origins. These changes have made possible the cultivation of a truly Baroque sound with inherent clarity, drive and intensity.

With a repertoire list that includes more than 300 compositions by J.S. Bach, as well as selected works from 52 other composers, the Festival rotates Bach's four major choral works on a four-year cycle. In this way, BW students are exposed to all four of the major Bach choral works during their college years; the B-minor Mass, the St. Matthew and St. John Passions, and the Christmas Oratorio.

Bach Festival Reviews

Various clevelandclassical.com reviews
BW Bach Festival highlighting saxophone, returning to roots on 86th annual event (preview) - Cleveland.com
MUSIC REVIEW: Baldwin Wallace Bach Fest - Cool Cleveland
MUSIC REVIEW: Kenari Quartet at Baldwin Wallace - Cool Cleveland
MUSIC REVIEW: Bach Festival @BaldwinWallace - Cool Cleveland
Bach Festival at Baldwin Wallace concludes with hair-raising 'St. Matthew Passion' - The Plain Dealer
Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival Concert One (April 15) - clevelandclassical.com

By Dr. Melvin Unger

Many would say it is the lucidity of Bach's music – the consummate integration of its structural elements – that makes it so great. Bach was unsurpassed in his ability to grasp (intuitively it seems) the possibilities of a melodic or harmonic idea, and to work these out in coherent, yet expressive ways. His music functions equally well on both horizontal and vertical planes – as a series of simultaneous melodic strands and as a progression of chords. It brings competing impulses into equilibrium: the logical and the mystical, the sonic and the symbolic. It constantly surprises the listener with its inventiveness.

While using as its starting point the harmonic language, compositional techniques and rhetorical figures of its day, it moves far beyond them. Bach's style is characterized by a richness of chromatic language, a logic of thematic unfolding and an overlay of hermeneutical (interpretive) allusions. It is no wonder that succeeding composers held him in such awe. Robert Schumann put it well: "Wir sind alle Stumper gegen ihn" (Next to him we are all plodders).

Presenting a comprehensive picture of Bach's creative genius is one of the chief objectives of the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival. View a list of works performed on Festival programs since its inception in 1933.