If you’re going to go out, you might as well go out in style.
Richard Webster helped start Bach Week while still a music student at Northwestern.
He was an organist, and his professor and mentor, Karel Paukert, founded the festival in 1974.
“One year later,” Webster says,” he turned the whole thing over to me. I was 21.”
So, since 1975, Webster has been Bach Week’s conductor and music director.
“It never occurred to me,” Webster says, “that this would go on for half a century.”
Now, Bach Week is about to end, with a piece that Webster says is “probably the pinnacle of all Western music,” by “the greatest composer of all time,” Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750).
Webster will wrap up the 51st and final concert series with Bach’s “Mass in B Minor,” at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church on May 5, at 4 p.m. That’s the same location where the first festival concert was held, and has been the series’ long-term home.
Webster says the Mass is Bach’s “quintessential gift to the ages,” something which always “brings tears” to Webster’s eyes whenever he conducts it or even just hears it.
Bach completed the Mass in 1749, one year before his death, and Webster says the master composer never heard the instrumental and choral piece performed in its entirety.
Bach Week was originally just works by Bach (“all Bach, all the time,” if they had AM radio back in 18th century Germany).
But, Webster explains, “there’s only so many times you can recycle the Brandenburg Concertos.”
So, the series was later expanded to include other Baroque and Renaissance composers, such as Telemann and Vivaldi.
As for why Bach Week is coming to a conclusion, Webster says it has lasted this long due to the “extraordinary passion of a small number of people who keep it going,” but now, with funding sources hard to come by, “we just need to let it go.”
Webster adds that “we have filled a niche in Chicago for a long time,” but now, there are several other Baroque era musical groups where such music can be heard.
Webster held a music leadership position at St. Luke’s for three decades before moving to Boston for a similar position. He recently retired, then un-retired for an associate music directorship at another church in Cambridge.
But he’s been coming back to Evanston for Bach Week every year.
“Of course I’m going to miss it,” Webster says. “This has been my life for 50 years.”
Ironically, Webster says, “when we perform the B Minor Mass on May 5, 2024, it will be 50 years to the day from our first [Bach Week] concert at St. Luke’s.”
Webster has no doubt that there will be tears in his eyes after Bach Week ends for good.
Of course, there’s the music.
But the Mass also ends with a message, “Dona Nobis Pacem,” or “Give Us Peace,” in Latin.
And while Bach week will soon be no more, Webster says he still plans to “keep being active musically in Chicago and Boston.”
“Musicians never retire. We love what we do. We just keep doing it.”
In other words, he’ll be back … or Bach.
Bach Week performances will be held at Nichols Concert Hall on Chicago Avenue on April 26, All Saints Episcopal Church in Chicago on April 28, and the final concert at St. Luke’s in Evanston on May 5. Each performance will include different selections, wrapping up with the Mass in the final concert.
For more information on times and tickets, go to bachweek.org.