(Click photo to watch video from News Center Maine 207, June 2025)
Media
The Eternal Bach: celebrating Bach and beyond at New York’s Bach Virtuosi Festival
The Bach Virtuosi Festival, founded and directed by violinist, conductor, and pedagogue Lewis Kaplan, launched its New York concert series on 14 May 2024. Bringing this festival, which began in Portland, Maine in 2016, to New York has been Kaplan’s desire for several years. The Portland festival will continue with its ninth season from 19-25 […]
Renowned pianist Richard Goode charms audience at Portland Bach festival
His performance centered around works by Beethoven, but references to Bach were felt in throughout. By Steve Feeney for the Portland Press Herald While it was works by Beethoven that were featured in a “special performance” by world renowned pianist Richard Goode on Friday night at this year’s Bach Virtuosi Festival at St. Luke’s Cathedral […]
Concert review: Tradition comes out on top in dueling Bach festivals
Returning musicians from the original event give Bach Virtuosi Festival the edge over Portland Bach Experience The battle of the Bach festivals in Portland entered its second round Sunday evening, when Lewis Kaplan raised the curtain on his Bach Virtuosi Festival, just hours after Emily Isaacson’s Portland Bach Experience concluded its run. Kaplan had started […]
Concert Review: Bach Virtuosi Festival begins with inspiring program
The concert Sunday at St. Luke’s was the first event of several in Portland this week. The seventh annual Bach Virtuosi Festival started on a high note – many of them, in fact, during its first event, a 90-minute concert Sunday at St. Luke’s Cathedral. The festival, which this year offers events, musical and otherwise, at various […]
Bach Virtuosi Festival adds a free concert to its weeklong series
The festival, founded by Lewis Kaplan in 2016, is bringing acclaimed classical musicians to Portland for six concerts. Lewis Kaplan stepped down from the Bowdoin International Music Festival in 2014 after serving for 50 years as artistic director of the event he founded. He was 80 at the time and could easily have let that […]
Concert review: Bach’s breadth, secular and sacred, on display at Maine festival’s opening program
A top-flight ensemble of Baroque music specialists demonstrates their ample strengths. It’s tempting to think of June as Bach season in Maine, thanks largely to a pair of festivals: the Bach Virtuosi Festival, which got underway Sunday evening at the Cathedral of St. Luke’s, and runs through Sunday, and the Portland Bach Experience, which runs […]
Bach Virtuosi Festival brings ‘the greatest in the world’ to Portland
At age 85, Lewis Kaplan draws energy trying to match or surpass what he has done before as a teacher, performer and music festival administrator. Speaking about the next Bach Virtuosi Festival at hand in early June, his conversation speeds up with enthusiasm as he talks about the roster of stars coming to Portland to […]
Critic’s picks: From Bach to ‘The Barber of Seville,’ 10 can’t-miss classical events
BACH VIRTUOSI FESTIVAL Portland is a destination for all things Bach and Baroque in June. Cantatas, concertos, and cello suites featuring some of the country’s finest early-music makers can be heard in venues such as St. Luke’s Cathedral and the Etz Chaim Synagogue. Free master classes will be held at Portland Conservatory. June 17-24, Portland, […]