Dayton Daily News from Dayton, Ohio • 37

Entertainment Travel IN THIS SECTION Terry Lawson, 2 Bridge, 3 At the Movies, 4 Books, 6 DAYTON DAILY NEWS Sunday, March 10, 1985 Page 1-D SALUD! he men behind the celebration remain some of the most provocative figures in all history not just music. at 24 groschen, a little less than a dollar. Fortunately, a discriminating and knowing buyer bought them and left them to an equally music-loving Princess Amalia of Prussia. After her death the concertos went to a Berlin library and thus were saved for the world. Igor Kipnis, the celebrated harpsichordist who played earlier this season for the Linton Music Series in Cincinnati, notes that Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier was circulated in handwritten copies until the end of the 18th century, at which point both English and German publishers made plans to print it.

Bach's own autograph score did not show up until 1896. It had been owned by the daughter of the late 18th century British Bach enthusiast, Samuel Wesley, and before her, by Muzio Clementi. Johann Sebastian Bach Domenico Scarlatti George Frederick Handel Birthday boys garner worldwide honors hile much has been made of the fact that Bach's fame was kept alive after his death by his composer sons, he mm invited to hear Bach and the orchestra. One of the guests, the Margrave of Brandenburg, was so impressed with what he heard, he tried to persuade Bach to send him some new works. But Bach was busy.

Two years later he remembered the request and picked out six concertos which he copied for the margrave. Betty Dietz Krebs On the Arts Today, the names of Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel and Domenico Scarlatti are linked not only because of the shadows they cast on the hosts of fellow musicians but also for another, more simple, reason: They share an unusual birthday, their 300th. We can pay homage to Bach, a fourth-generation church musician who even then was recognized as the foremost organist in all Europe. And we can share in the rediscoveries of Handel, the opera composer who fancied extravaganzas. And we can admire the musical fecundity of Scarlatti, the sonata-writer.

Yet there is behind all the facts a strange and wonderful question: What produced in these three men the genius that makes them giants among men, even now, 300 years later? What drove them to create the sort of works of art that survive? And one wonders what they might think, if they could revisit this world and find a six-hour "Bach-a-thon" such as the Dayton Bach Society plans for next Sunday, or a celebratory performance of the monumental Minor Mass such as the one given a week ago by the Cincinnati Symphony, or a Ter-centary Festival of the three composers' music planned for the 53rd annual Bach Festival at Baldwin-Wallace College in May. The world in the mid-1980s has joined forces to celebrate the birthday boys. All three, I suspect, would have trouble believing it. Bach, on the other hand, could have understood some of it. After all, he once was so awed by Handel's music that he walked 20 miles to Halle, Germany, Handel's birthplace He'd heard that the much more famous Handel was scouring the countryside to line up singers for his opera productions in London.

Unfortunately, by the time Bach made it to Halle, he found that Handel had left the day before. As for Handel's having more than a passing remorse at missing the schoolmaster-church musician, it seems highly unlikely. modest musical talents which heaven has bestowed on me, and understood your Royal Highness's gracious willingness to accept some music of my composition. Following this condescending command, I venture to present my most humble homage to your Royal Highness with these concerti which I adapted for various instruments, begging your Royal Highness to not judge them by the standards of your own refined and exquisite taste known to the world Apparently neither the dedication nor the carefully penned score made any impression on the margrave. The parcel was never opened and when the owner died in 1734, his extensive music collection was put up for sale.

Carefully detailed in the catalog were works by Vivaldi and other Italian composers, but Bach's music was tied up in a bundle with many other pieces and valued ach's letter of explanation, which was written in French, was not exactly tactful, especially in today's terms. music is lost. Some estimates put the figure at two-fifths of the cantatas. Most of the work he produced at Coethen has vanished, but it is the Brandenburg Concertos that hint at the kind of orchestra he had to work with there. And when Prince Leopold's court went to Karlsbad "to take the waters" at the Bohemian resort, his guests were "Two years ago, when I had the privilege of playing before your Royal Highness, I experienced your condescending interest in the 7S rrmrrrvwr Ma wf i 4 1 1 i jjjjf TlilTi Sriife may well be considered the titan of the three birthday boys.

In contrast, Handel, who was born Feb.23, thus a month before Bach, spent much of his life in England, was a man of the theater, suave, with sophisticated tastes. He went to Italy as a virtuoso harpsichordist and a composer to "exhibit his prowess to the astonishment of everybody." But the audience for opera was different from that of today in Italy. Pope Clement XI, for example, was known as a great patron of the arts, but he disapproved of the relatively new medium of opera. His predecessor, Innocent XI, had even ordered one opera house to be demolished in the "name of morality." Handel, who produced many of his 24 operas at the King's Theater in the Haymar-ket of London, (it was destroyed by fire in 1789) wrote one titled Agrippina in three weeks during a trip to Venice. For 27 nights it was performed in iheater that had been reopened, while not far away two other opera houses were open and also drawing nightly crowds.

As recently as 1944, one collection of opera musical biographies claimed that Handel's operas "are not discussed individually because none of them is heard any longer on the operatic stage." How the situation has changed. The Metropolitan Opera, for instance, had a ready following for its new production of Rinaldo. That opera was introduced on Handel's 26th birthday in 1711. Accounts show a large orchestra was used with four trumpets and kettledrums. Viewers talked of the "spectacular staging" at the Haymar-ket Theater.

Special effects included a flock of live sparrows let loose. The audience loved it, but the critics did not. Rinaldo was performed a month later in Ireland, becoming the first Italian opera to be performed in' Dublin. Messiah, the Handel oratorio that even non-concertgoers know, was also performed for the first time in Dublin in 1742. The invitation to Dublin was a welcome opportunity.

Handel had run into some bad times in London. He was bankrupt. Several of his operas had been disasters and there was a time when he was in fear of being thrown into debtors' prison. He was, to put it mildly, depressed. We re invited to the or two men of music, their lives and careers were as different as can be imagined for two 18th-century musi Reece and Darlene Schilling; the Camerata Antiqua, which specializes in 18th-century music; the Friendly Winds quintet; guitarist Jim McCutcheon; oboist Mark Twehues; the Miami Valley Horn Club, which has 35 French hornists; horn soloist Richard Chenoweth; and harpsichordist Julane Rodgers.

Admission for the Sunday two-part concert will be free. By BETTY DIETZ KREBS Daily Arts Editor A six-hour marathon performance which the Dayton Bach Society is calling a "Bach-a-thon" will feature a large number of Dayton area musicians, instrumental soloists, singers, ensembles and choral groups. Even the Miami Valley Horn Club will perform Bach's music. The concert will be presented in two parts next Sunday at the Seventh-day Adventist Church on Stroop Road and Southern Boulevard. The concert has been planned as a pre-view of the actual birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach, which falls on March 21.

The performance is scheduled from 3 to 6 p.m. and from 7 to 10 p.m. At about 8:30 p.m., according to Dayton Bach Society conductor Richard Benedum, a huge birthday cake will be brought in, carrying of course 300 candles. In addition to the Bach Society chorus led by Benedum, performers will include pianists Robert Ruckman and Tibor Szasz; flutist Marianne Chenoweth; organist V. Earle Copes, Martha Folts, R.

Alan Kimbrough and Richard Benedum; members of the string program at Stivers Performing Arts Magnet School, and members of the Dayton area Suzuki violin program. Also appearing will be sopranos Donna Bach Ricercare No.2 which has been programmed to follow was orchestrated by Anton Webern. Michael Gielen, music director of the CSO, will conduct the two Music Hall concerts. Soloist Heinz Holliger will be featured in both the Handel Concerto No. 3 and the oboe concerto (also a No.

3) by Bruno Maderna. Among the outstanding Bach-Handel-Scarlatti programs coming up is the 53rd annual Baldwin-Wallace College BACH FESTIVAL in Berea May 23-26. The program will feature music from rare Bach prints and manuscripts held by the Riemenschneider Bach Institute at Baldwin-Wallace. Soloists will include soprano Phyllis Bryn-Julson, soprano; German tenor Karl Markus; baritone Bruce Abel, and mezzo soprano Gisela Pohl. Eight performances of a BACH PROGRAM will be given by the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall at New York's Lincoln Center March 21-April 2.

Guest conductor Rafael Kubelik will conduct. The Bach Passions will make up a three-day festival April 3, 6 and 7 at New York's Carnegie Hall. cians, suggests George Buelow, who's a professor of musicology at Indiana University at Bloomington. It was these differences that determined the music they would produce and even the fame that would come to them centuries after their deaths. Bach, who was born March 21, 1685, in the Thuringian town of Eisenach, to a family that had produced musicians for nearly 200 years, spent most of his life in a limited area of Germany.

Seldom did he go far from Leipzig or Coethen, and he saw himself as basically a professional, a composer whose job it was to produce music cantatas for church, occasionally an entertaining piece to please the noblemen he served. Yet Bach chafed under the pressures of his life. His church jobs paid little, hardly enough to keep a family, though many of his 20 children would die young. Ambitious and quick-tempered, he clearly found solace in his music. He was a virtuoso performer and it was that which kept his reputation alive.

The truth is, he never heard his mighty Minor Mass. A work not suited for the Catholic Church in spite of its form, the Mass was never performed in its entirety during Bach's lifetime. But he went on writing violin concertos, mighty organ works, the famous Brandenburg Concertos, solo pieces. Tragically, a large quantity of Bach's A baroque birthday concert has been scheduled for Bach's day, March 21, by the EARLY MUSIC GROUP, which is based in Yellow Springs. The 8 p.m.

performance will be at the Presbyterian Church in Yellow Springs. The music of Bach, Handel and Scarlatti, all born in 1685, and Schutz, who was born a century earlier, will make up the program. Ticket reservations are made by calling 767-8181. I he oratorio, Messiah, was literally produced in white heat. The first part was done in seven days, the second in nine Next weekend's pair of concerts by the CINCINNATI SYMPHONY will include two works by Bach and an oboe concerto by Handel.

The program for the 11 a.m. Friday and 8:30 p.m. Saturday concerts will begin with the Schoenberg orchestration of the Bach Prelude and Fugue (St. Anne). The days and the third was completed in six days While he wrote, he never left the house.

A manservant brought food and, when he re-See BIRTHDAY, Page 3-D. Dayton bids goodbye to' hell-raising' WAVI Radio operation. WAVI was put on the air on March 1, 1955, by H.K "Bud" Crowl. What followed was three decades' worth of hirings, firings, rant-ings. ravings, laughs, tears and death threats.

LOOKING BACK, IT'S tough to pinpoint the most interesting event in WAVI's often-stormy history. Maybe it was when Dayton civil-rights groups asked the Federal Communications Commission to lift WAVI's broadcast license, charging that the station was attacking the city's black leaders. Or perhaps it was when a local judge urged members of the Dayton Bar Association to file a complaint against the station after WAVI listeners blasted another judge for his decision involving a convicted rapist Or maybe it was when WAVI became one of the first radio stations in the country to air commercials for condoms WAVI may be gone, but the memories linger The change, which station officials later admitted was made solely to shake up the audience, lasted only 48 hours before WAVI returned to its old programming. In 1971, the station dropped all of its music to become a full-time news and information station. The '70s were an era of turmoil, and WAVI's often acid-tongued talk-show hosts welcomed it with open microphones.

On July 2, 1972. Democratic State Rep. C.J. McLin announced that Dayton's black leaders might sue WAVI for "inciting to riot" as the result of a show the previous day on which a talk-show host told whites to stay out of West Dayton. THAT SAME YEAR, Bob Kwesell joined the station as a talk-show host.

Kwesell, with his loud voice and brash style, waded into controversy with the zeal of a kid in a candy store. The day after Neal Bradley Long was arrest-See DAYTON. Page J-D By BOB BATZ Television Writer By the time WAVI Radio disappeared with the setting sun on Feb. 28, a victim of changing times and changing ownership. Bob Kwesell was already among the ranks of the unemployed.

Kwesell had lost his job earlier in the day but as the end drew near, he had a few things to say about the radio station where he had worked as a talk-show host for more than eight years "Yeah. I lost a job." he said, "but the real losers are the people of the Miami Valley because they'll get out of bed tomorrow morning without WAVI Radio. It's the end of an era and that's sad. real sad." Then Kwesell brightened and added. "But we sure did raise some hell out here, didn't we?" WAVI Radio departed the Dayton icene one day shy of its 30th birthday after toner Broadcasting new owner of WAVI and her sister station.

WDAO. gave WAVI new call letters. WWSN. and changed it from an AM talk radio nation to an FM adult-contetnporrv mmjC controversial radio station. In the worst of times, it was a ratings also-ran with touches of WKRPin Cincinnati.

Actually, WAVI didn't create any waves when it first signed on the air in 1955. The station had only three on-the-air people Ber-nie Wulkotte. Stanlee Henry and Tommy Sutton and while its studios were being built on Cincinnati Street, the trio broadcast out of the basement of Sutton's home in Upper Dayton View. THE FIRST INDICATION that WAVI was destined to do things a bit differently didn't come until 1959 But it was a dandy indication. WAVI had been broadcasting big-band music and soft vocals by such singers as Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee and Perry Como Then, one Tuesday morning in 1959, WAVI listeners awoke to the blaring sounds of rock music.

The day became known as Black Tuesday, and the listeners complained so loudly that the story of WAVI's overnight turnaround made all of the national unices 4 Kwesell: 'People the losers' In the best of times, it was Dayton.