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UNKNOWN BACH ARIA PREMIERED by AH YOUNG HONG
A printed copy of the lost score, the first vocal work by Bach to surface in 70 years. The Leipzig Bach Archive
Harpsichord player, Joseph Gascho and soprano, Ah Hong, prepare to perform music not heard for nearly 300 years.
Bach's unidentified music barely eluded a devastating fire at the Anna Amalia library in Sept. 2, 2004. It is seen here the day after the blaze.
NPR's Performance Today
Washington: In less than 24 hours, the staff of Performance Today, NPR's signature classical-music show, tracked down and produced the first broadcast of a score by Johann Sebastian Bach that had been undiscovered and unperformed for nearly 300 years - beating the scheduled world premiere by several months.
An excerpt from the widely-publicized, previously -unknown score by Johann Sebastian Bach was performed for the first time in centuries on the June 9 edition of Performance Today. It was based on a two-page handwritten aria, titled "Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn' ihn" (If a man does everything with God and nothing without Him"), and composed in October 1713 as a birthday present for German Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Saxe-Weimar, for whom Bach served as court organist.
The discovery of the aria made global headlines on June 8th. According to Benjamin Roe, NPR Director of Music, "Once we heard about the discovery, we were determined to track down the perform the score as soon as possible." Although news organizations were prohibited from displaying photographs of the entire score, Performance Today's staff turned into "music detectives". The team of producers (including a Ph.D. musicologist with expertise in Baroque music) pieced together seven lines of the score from the different pictures used in assorted media outlets. Then, they faced the time-consuming task of trying to read these fragments, grabbed some fuzzy faxes and files, sufficiently to transcribe the music and Bach's notes and commission a studio performance.
Finally, late in the evening on June 8, they brought talented young harpsichord player, Joseph Gascho, and equally talented soprano, Ah Hong fromt the Peabody Conservatory faculty into the NPR studios in Washington, D.C. "The sense of excitement - and of history being made in front of us - was palpable," Roe recalls. "I'm tremendously proud of our NPR Music staff for putting together such an incredible performance, both in the studio and behind the scenes, in under 24 hours."
Broadcast stations and times for Performance Today can be found at www.npr.org/wheretohear. In addition, Morning Edition ran a story about the discovery from the host of Performance Today, Fred Child on the morning's show. Both pieces can also be heard online through npr.org.
This broadcast was heard around the world and including such countries as the United Kingdom, Canada, Switzerland, Germany, Israel, Norway, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovnia, Portugal, Korea, Lithuania, Netherlands, and the United States. It was also up on Euroradio Satellite, so more stations may have picked it up as well.
