When the Festival Bach Montréal 2024 concluded this December, it left behind a tapestry of sounds and experiences as intricately woven as the composer’s most elaborate fugues. For nearly a month, the city— and indeed beyond stretching to Québec and Ottawa—reverberated with the legacy of Johann Sebastian Bach, reimagined through a rich program that mixed time-honored traditions with contemporary approaches.
This year’s edition offered a remarkable journey that began with open-armed accessibility and culminated in moments of shimmering grandeur. The festival, which has become a touchstone for Bach aficionados in North America since its modest six-day inception in 2005, has never been content to present “just another concert.” Instead, it always proposes a labyrinth of musical paths, each event inviting the listener to navigate the composer’s legacy from a fresh perspective—sometimes playful, often profound, and always anchored in excellence.
As the Bach Festival Montréal 2024 unfolded across November and December, it offered far more than a sequence of concerts. It became a journey—one that moved between centuries, continents, and artistic temperaments, challenging audiences to broaden their understanding of Bach’s legacy and the many creative minds it has inspired. By the festival’s conclusion, listeners had been guided through an ambitious itinerary: from celebrations of Bach’s most revered works to revelatory encounters with his contemporaries and heirs, as well as provocative dialogues between Bach’s timeless language and the modern age.
A Grand Opening with Bach’s Monumental Mass
The Bach Festival 2024 launched in spectacular fashion on Saturday evening, November 23rd at the Maison symphonique, where Leonardo García Alarcón led the Festival Bach Montréal Orchestra and Choir in a resounding performance of Bach’s Mass in B Minor. Fresh off an equally successful concert the previous night at Québec City’s Palais Montcalm—where attendance reportedly doubled compared to last year—the Montréal engagement drew such a passionate response that an additional tier of seating had to be opened.
From the very first “Kyrie,” it was evident that García Alarcón’s interpretive flair would highlight the Mass’s dynamic contrasts. The orchestra’s period instruments lent a warm, transparent color to the score, while the well-blended choir underscored both the reverential and jubilant dimensions of Bach’s writing. Soloists Mariana Flores (soprano), Dara Savinova (alto), Nicholas Scott (tenor), and Andreas Wolf (bass) tackled the work’s intricate passages with convincing poise.
In the closing movements, García Alarcón introduced an unexpected theatrical element that surprised even longtime Bach devotees: rather than remaining behind the orchestra, the choir gently filed offstage and processed down both sides of the parterre—still singing in unison. This moment of immersive staging turned the final section of the Mass into a sweeping surround-sound experience, as the chorus’s voices emerged from across the hall.
The result was not only visually striking but also deeply affecting, reminding everyone of the communal nature of sacred music. By the time the final “Dona nobis pacem” dissolved into silence, the audience was on its feet, visibly moved by the performance. García Alarcón’s lifelong passion for Bach shone throughout, underscoring why the Mass in B Minor remains one of Western music’s most cherished masterworks—and why this year’s festival opener is likely to be remembered as a resounding success.
November 29 at Église St. Georges – An Immersive Reading of Bach’s Motets
On November 29 at Église St. Georges, the British ensemble Solomon’s Knot offered an illuminating exploration of Bach’s grand motets, transforming what might have felt like an austere choral tradition into a vivid, immediate experience. Performing without a conventional conductor, the singers and instrumentalists navigated the motets’ intricate polyphony with remarkable cohesion, giving each phrase a crisp vitality. Their “Jesu, meine Freude” was particularly striking, as the group’s transparency and subtle dynamic shifts underscored the text’s emotional core.
Interspersed with works by Johann Christoph Bach, the concert also highlighted lesser-known gems, weaving a nuanced tapestry that connected the broader Bach family legacy. The setting of Église St. Georges, with its warm acoustics, further enhanced the ensemble’s radiant blending of voices, making for a memorable evening that reaffirmed the timeless appeal of Bach’s choral artistry
November 30: Telemann’s Hidden Facets
Early november, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin (Akamus) offered a nuanced exploration of Georg Philipp Telemann, a figure who often stands in Bach’s shadow. Rather than present the composer’s most familiar pieces, Akamus dug deeper, showcasing an array of works that highlighted Telemann’s stylistic breadth, from unusual key selections to lively “Polish” rhythms reflecting the cultural encounters of his early career.
In the intimate surroundings of Église St. Georges, Telemann’s music emerged as witty, exploratory, and refreshingly unpredictable. By shaping an evening that alternated between rich instrumental textures and daring harmonic shifts, Akamus proved how much vitality this repertoire can still hold. Their performance, meticulously balanced and historically informed, served as a timely reminder that Bach’s world was never a solitary fortress but a vibrant landscape shared with equally inventive creators.
December 2: From Bach to Penderecki
On December 2 at the Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours, Luka Coetzee filled in for the previously announced cellist Bruno Philippe, offering a recital aptly titled “De Bach à Penderecki.” Despite the limited time to prepare, she presented a cohesive journey through modern and baroque repertoire, opening with the stark, texturally intricate “Preludio” from Penderecki’s Cello Suite.
Her program then moved into Bach’s Suite no. 6 in D major, highlighting the composer’s freer, more ornamented idiom, and continued with Ligeti’s two-movement Sonata, which introduced the audience to contemporary folk-inspired motifs and edgy harmonic twists. After the intermission, a brief but focused reading of Dall’Abaco’s Caprice no. 2 paved the way for Bach’s luminous Suite no. 3, culminating in Cassadó’s colorful, Catalan-inflected Suite. Although the circumstances of her appearance were unplanned, Coetzee performed with steady assurance, leaving a clear sense that she had embraced the spirit of each work on the program.
December 4 at Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours: A Rethinking of ‘L’offrande Musicale’
As the calendar turned to December, the festival delved into Bach’s own monumental creations. On December 4, at the Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours, flutist François Lazarevitch and his fellow musicians—Josef Zak (violin), Lucile Boulanger (viola da gamba), and Maude Gratton (harpsichord)—presented Bach’s “L’offrande Musicale” (BWV 1079) in a way that felt both intimate and contemplative.
Instead of following the order laid out in the program, the ensemble gently reordered the Ricercares, Canons, and the Trio Sonata. This subtle reshuffling encouraged the audience to let go of expectations and simply trust the music’s internal logic. The result was a performance that felt more like a quiet exploration than a formal recital. Each movement emerged as if discovered anew, each transition as a whispered conversation among instruments rather than a grand pronouncement…
December 5 at Salle Bourgie: Bach and Shostakovich in Resonance
The following night offered yet another shift in perspective. At Salle Bourgie on December 5, pianists Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy assembled a program intertwining preludes and fugues by Bach with those of Dmitri Shostakovich. Rather than a simple “compare and contrast,” their performance felt like a dialogue stretched across the centuries. Bach’s crystalline structures seemed to open portals in time, allowing Shostakovich’s mid-20th-century to flow back and forth, illuminating new facets of both composers’ work.
© Antoine Saito / Festival Bach Montréal
The pianists treated this pairing as a kind of ritual, allowing each piece’s character to inform the next. Bach’s lines might be shaped with a subtle elasticity that one wouldn’t expect from a strictly “Baroque” approach, but here it kind of made sense, especially when juxtaposed with Shostakovich’s raw immediacy. The interplay suggested that music, regardless of its era, continually poses profound questions about existence, beauty, and meaning.
In hearing these pieces side by side, the audience was invited to contemplate the timelessness of human expression, amidst a breathtaking setting, where yin and yang coexisted in perfect harmony, the Festival Bach Montréal’s timeless scenography completed the scene.
December 8 at Notre-Dame Basilica: A Festival’s Reflective Close
The festival’s concluding concert on December 8 at Notre-Dame Basilica aimed to bring all these threads together. Under conductor Clemens Schuldt, the Festival Orchestra and the Chœur Les Éléments offered a program encompassing Bach’s own cantatas, a Brandenburg concerto, selections from Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Magnificat, and Haydn’s “La reine” Symphony.
While the basilica’s acoustic environment presented challenges persistent, low background hum that was hardly ideal for refined listening—the musicians brought a spirit of invention and adaptability to the occasion. Schuldt’s approach to Haydn, for instance, revealed witty turns of phrase and an exuberant palette of dynamic contrasts, providing a luminous counterpart to the evening’s Bach selections. The choir delivered clear, resonant lines that fit neatly within the festival’s overarching narrative of exploring a continuum of musical thought rather than a static canon, as demonstrated during this year’s overture. Even last-minute cast changes among the vocal soloists were handled gracefully, adding a human touch to this grand finale.
That evening also brought news that next year’s edition will be called the “Festival International Bach Montréal,” a fitting evolution for an event that now regularly attracts audiences and artists from around the globe. With over 17,000 spectators attending this year, the festival made clear that authenticity, intellectual curiosity, and unwavering artistic standards can draw crowds eager to engage deeply with the music.
The Festival’s Enduring Legacy and Its International Horizon
Walking out of each venue—be it the Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours after the delicately reassembled “Offrande musicale” or the bustling Salle Bourgie following Kolesnikov and Tsoy’s tonal dialogues—one sensed that listeners had been changed by the experience. The overheard exchanges in hallways, the hushed discussions at the Festival’s Bistro or during the Off-Bach week, and the enthusiastic whispers from seasoned connoisseurs mingling with first-time festival-goers all bore witness to the festival’s impact.
In addition, these concerts emphasized how Bach’s music can serve as a springboard for understanding broader questions: what does it mean to be modern while honoring tradition? How can performances of centuries-old compositions feel as urgent and meaningful as any new creation? The festival’s programming—neither pandering to easy populism nor trapped in academic rigor—offered a balanced answer.
The decision to rename the event the “Festival International Bach Montréal” in 2025 signals the organizers’ ambition and confidence. The festival’s roots have always been cosmopolitan, drawing artists and audiences from multiple continents, nurturing young talent, and inspiring established masters to experiment. Now, with a global title reflecting its global reach, the festival is poised to become not just a North American reference but a worldwide beacon for Bach interpretation. We can anticipate that future editions will continue this trajectory, forging new connections, discovering lesser-known repertoire, and finding fresh angles on familiar masterpieces.
