Sunday’s concert at the Fredonia Opera House brought the 19th annual Bach & Beyond Festival to a close with a Father’s Day musical celebration of the father-and-son program of Johannes Sebastian Bach and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. This year’s festival has become a high point of the Opera House’s 20th year celebration and Sunday’s concert brought into focus the comparison between two composers related both by blood and by musical style.

The pre-concert “Bach & Before” discussion featured violinist Julie Leven. Concertgoers at the Festival have become aware of her talents on the violin, but today she spoke about her ongoing work with homeless shelters in Boston. Julie has talked about this project before here and each time she speaks about it, it makes that much more of an impact with our own audience members. Now in its fifth year, Sheter Music Boston has made such an impact in the Boston community that Julie was recently given a Boston Neighborhood Fellows Program Award for her work. Both Leven and festival director Grant Cooper spoke about the impact of music, not only to entertain but to improve the lives of the residents of the shelters that Julie performs for. For more information, go to www.sheltermusicboston.org.

Cooper began the concert with an extended work by C.P.E. Bach’s godfather, Georg Philipp Telemann. One might assume that a multi-movement work based on the story of Don Quixote to have been written in the mid- to late-19th century – many composers during that time period chose to use literature as the basis for their works including Jules Massenet, who wrote an opera on the tale – but Telemann chose to use the novel as inspiration for his eight-movement work Don Quichotte. The work itself is a dance suite like Bach’s Orchestral Suites and Handel’s Water Music, with each movement representing a single mood or dance rhythm, but in addition Telemann chose to have each movement connect to a facet of the story, as well. The ensemble, made up of the entire string consort, as well as Sean Duggan on harpsichord, was in top form this afternoon. I had never heard this work before and now I wonder why – it’s a fascinating dance suite, containing a great number of special moments throughout, and it was a treat to be introduced to such a fine piece.

The Concerto in A was originally written for flute by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach but, as his father and many other composers of the time had, it was re-worked into two other versions – one for cello and one for harpsichord. As Maestro Cooper mentioned in the first evening, this act of re-arranging the works was not due to laziness on the part of the composer but simply because they wanted to allow as many performers and audiences a chance to experience their music (this was, of course, almost 200 years before the recording industry even existed!). Today’s soloist was Fredonia flute professor Susan Royal, and her performance was very strong from beginning to end – the second movement in particular shone with both emotion and intensity.

Cheryl Bishkoff and Sean Duggan graced the stage after the intermission to perform J.S. Bach’s Oboe Sonata in G minor. This piece is special in Bach’s catalog because it is the only large-form chamber work originally written for the oboe; there are several other works that began their lives as music for flute, organ, or harpsichord and were later arranged for solo oboe and there are many extended obbligato solos in his works throughout his life, but the Sonata in G minor is the only one that started out as an oboe work and was later arranged for flute. After the two full ensemble works on the first half, it was a nice change of pace to hear such a sparse instrumentation as oboe and harpsichord, and both Cheryl and Sean played beautifully together. It was quite interesting hearing this particular piece with only harpsichord in the accompaniment (or “continuo”), since most of the chamber works on the Festival this year paired a cello with the harpsichord. This lighter instrumentation was quite effective in emphasizing the plaintive tone of the oboe and allowing the light, airy quality of the Sonata to resonate.

Saturday evening’s concert featured a work for two violas, so it was no surprise that Sunday’s concert also had a feature of two identical instruments – the Trio Sonata for two violins by C.P.E. Bach was described by Grant Cooper as a dialogue between two contrasting “melancholy” and “cheerful” moods. Whereas most Baroque composers would dedicate an entire movement to one idea or mood, C.P.E. Bach experimented throughout his career with surprising the audience by quickly alternating between two different moods in the same movement. To our contemporary ears, these shifts don’t have the same effect, but in his day, the younger Bach was seen as a composer who was breaking down the musical borders that older composers – like his father – had created through their own music. Both of the violinists, Jennifer Wood and Julie Leven, sang and danced through their instruments, creating a rousing dialogue across the stage with the continuo (Sean Duggan on harpsichord and Bryan Eckenrode on cello) almost acting as a referee between the two soloists, grounding them with their bass lines and harmonic flourishes. Leven is often featured as a soloist in the Festival concerts, but it was enjoyable to hear Wood in this feature role – her sound and musicality were an equal partner to Leven and the back-and-forth between the two was a highlight of the concert.

Cooper preceded the final piece with a brilliant missive on why it is important to experience many different works from a composer’s history – not just the “masterworks” – because it is those experimental works that aren’t quite great that allow the creators to gain the necessary experience and insight in order to create their truly best works. The International Baroque Soloists finished the concert and the Festival with a sort of bookend, if you will – the Sinfonia in G by C.P.E. Bach. The Festival started off with another of the younger Bach’s Sinfonias (a precursor to the Classical era’s Symphony) and effectively closed the three-day series with this three-movement work for strings and continuo. Even though the group’s name denotes the fact that they are all soloists, the ensemble performance was extremely tight and nuanced throughout the work – and indeed the entire Festival.

The Bach and Beyond Festival will return for its 20th year next year on June 13, 14, and 15 in the The 1891 Fredonia Opera House (9 Church Street in Fredonia). Tickets are $20 for each individual concert. Tickets can be purchased in person, on-line (www.fredopera.org/tickets/), or by telephone (679-1891).

Rob Deemer is an Associate Professor of Music Composition at the School of Music, SUNY Fredonia