Bach Cantatas
Tue, Dec 9, 2025, 7:30 pm
Alice Tully Hall
2 hours, including intermission
No composer wrote more voluminously or skillfully for the voice than Johann Sebastian Bach, and this selection of chamber cantatas offers a gorgeous sampling of Bach’s vocal music, including his only cantatas in Italian. Caffeine dependency is not a recent trend, as shown in the satirical “Coffee Cantata,” in effect a short comic opera about a drink that was taking Europe by storm; the cantata, in which a father attempts to bribe his daughter to give up the tantalizing beverage, humorously mocks both the growing popularity of coffee and the feeling that the trendy drink was a bad habit.
“If I couldn’t, three times a day, be allowed to drink my little cup of coffee, in my anguish I will turn into a shriveled-up roast goat!”
Program
Johann Sebastian Bach
(1685–1750)Non sa che sia dolore, BWV 209
(c. 1747)Johann Sebastian Bach
(1685–1750)Durchlauchtster Leopold, BWV 173.1
(1722)Johann Sebastian Bach
(1685–1750)Amore traditore, BWV 203
(1718-19)Johann Sebastian Bach
(1685–1750)Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht, BWV 211, "Coffee Cantata"
(c. 1734)
Kenneth Weiss
Ani Kavafian
Cho-Liang Lin
Lawrence Dutton
Timothy Eddy
Demarre McGill
Peter Kolkay
Kenneth Weiss, a New York native, is a distinguished musician renowned for his expertise in early keyboard repertoire. A student of the legendary Gustav Leonhardt, he has garnered acclaim for his prize-winning recordings, including Bach’s Art of Fugue, The Well-Tempered Clavier, and Goldberg Variations. With a rich background as both a performer and educator, Kenneth has taught harpsichord at esteemed institutions such as Juilliard and the Haute École de Musique de Geneva. Currently, he serves as a professor of Chamber Music at the Paris Conservatory, where he inspires the next generation of musicians. This season, he will perform with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and participate in Bach festivals in Weimar, Leipzig, Lausanne, and in the Berkshires, showcasing his profound passion for Bach’s masterpieces. Kenneth’s performances continue to resonate with audiences worldwide, reflecting his deep commitment to the art of early music.
Violinist Ani Kavafian enjoys a prolific career as a soloist, chamber musician, and professor. She has performed with many of America’s leading orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and San Francisco Symphony. In the 2019-20 season, she continued her longtime association as an artist of the Chamber Music Society with appearances in New York and on tour. Last summer she participated in several music festivals, including the Heifetz International Institute and the Sarasota Chamber Music, Bridgehampton, Meadowmount, Norfolk, and Angel Fire festivals. She and her sister, violinist and violist Ida Kavafian, have performed with the symphonies of Detroit, Colorado, Tucson, San Antonio, and Cincinnati, and have recorded the music of Mozart and Sarasate on the Nonesuch label. She is a Full Professor at Yale University and has appeared at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall numerous times with colleagues and students from Yale. She has received an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Young Concert Artists International Auditions award and has appeared at the White House on three occasions. Her recordings can be heard on the Nonesuch, RCA, Columbia, Arabesque, and Delos labels. Born in Istanbul of Armenian heritage, Kavafian studied violin in the US with Ara Zerounian and Mischa Mischakoff. She received her master’s degree from The Juilliard School under Ivan Galamian. She plays the 1736 Muir McKenzie Stradivarius violin.
Cho-Liang Lin’s concert career launched in 1980 with his debut playing the Mendelssohn Concerto with the New York Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta. He has since performed as soloist with virtually every major orchestra in the world. At age 31 he joined the faculty of the Juilliard School, and in 2006 was appointed professor at Rice University. He was music director of La Jolla SummerFest for 18 years, currently serves as artistic director of the Beare’s Premiere Music Festival in Hong Kong, and recently founded the Taipei Music Academy and Festival. Many of today’s composers have written for him, including John Harbison, Christopher Rouse, Tan Dun, John Williams, Steven Stucky, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Bright Sheng, Paul Schoenfield, Lalo Schifrin, and Joan Tower. Lin performs on Stradivari and Samuel Zygmuntowicz violins. His recordings can be heard on the Sony Classical, Decca, BIS, Delos, and Ondine labels.
Lawrence Dutton was the violist of the nine-time Grammy-winning Emerson String Quartet, which in 2023 performed its final concert after a storied 47-year career. He has also performed as guest artist with the Beaux Arts and Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trios and the Juilliard and Guarneri String Quartets. With the late Isaac Stern he collaborated on the International Chamber Music Encounters at Carnegie Hall and in Jerusalem. He began violin studies with Margaret Pardee and viola studies with Francis Tursi at the Eastman School. He holds degrees from the Juilliard School, where he studied with Lillian Fuchs. Currently, Dutton is Distinguished Professor of Viola and Chamber Music at Stony Brook University; Distinguished Artist at the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia; and Artistic Director of the Hoch Chamber Music Series in Bronxville, New York. He exclusively uses Thomastik Spirocore strings, and his viola is a Samuel Zygmuntowicz (Brooklyn, 2025).
Cellist Timothy Eddy has earned distinction as a recitalist, soloist with orchestra, chamber musician, recording artist, and teacher of cello and chamber music. He has performed with numerous symphonies, including Dallas, Colorado, Jacksonville, North Carolina, and Stamford. He has appeared at the Mostly Mozart, Ravinia, Aspen, Santa Fe, Marlboro, Lockenhaus, Spoleto, and Sarasota music festivals. He has won prizes in numerous national and international competitions, including the 1975 Gaspar Cassado International Violoncello Competition in Italy. Eddy is currently Professor of Cello at the Juilliard School and New York’s Mannes College of Music, and he was a frequent faculty member at the Isaac Stern Chamber Music Workshops at Carnegie Hall. A former member of the Galimir Quartet, the New York Philomusica, and the Bach Aria Group, he collaborates regularly in recital with pianist Gilbert Kalish. He has recorded a wide range of repertoire from Baroque to avant-garde for the Angel, Arabesque, Columbia, CRI, Delos, Musical Heritage, New World, Nonesuch, Vanguard, Vox, and Sony Classical labels. He performs on a 1728 Matteo Goffriller cello.
Flutist Demarre McGill has gained international recognition as a soloist, recitalist, chamber, and orchestral musician. Winner of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, he has appeared as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the San Francisco, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Dallas, Grant Park, San Diego, Chicago, and Baltimore Symphony Orchestras. Now principal flute of the Seattle Symphony, he previously served as principal flute of the Dallas Symphony, San Diego Symphony, Florida Orchestra, and Santa Fe Opera Orchestra. He has also served as acting principal flute of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. McGill is an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program and has participated in the Santa Fe, Marlboro, Seattle, and Stellenbosch chamber music festivals, among others.
Called “stunningly virtuosic” by the New York Times and “superb” by the Washington Post, Peter Kolkay is the only bassoonist to be awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant. In addition to performing with CMS, he regularly appears as a chamber musician at the Sarasota, Music@Menlo, and Bridgehampton summer festivals. Kolkay has commissioned and premiered solo works by Joan Tower, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Elliott Carter, and Tania León, among many others, and his most recent recordings include an album of music for bassoon and strings with the Calidore String Quartet, and the Christopher Rouse concerto with the Albany Symphony. He is Professor of Bassoon at the Vanderbilt University Blair School of Music and has given master classes throughout the US, Mexico, and South Korea. Kolkay is an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program, and holds degrees from Lawrence University, the Eastman School of Music, and Yale University. He is a native of Naperville, Illinois.
