The Eve of Bach is upon us.

Tomorrow will mark the 334th anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach’s birth. I’m sure you are aware by now that The Classical Network is in the final hours of its Bach 500 campaign. Every March, we ask that 500 generous listeners step up and support the music by making a donation to the station IN ANY AMOUNT. Once we hit those 500 contributions, we stop asking and throw open the floodgates, filling the airwaves with undiluted Bach all day on March 21st. If we don’t hit that goal, we have to keep asking. The champagne goes flat and the ice cream cake melts.

So I’m asking one final time: if you haven’t contributed yet, or if you haven’t given in a while, or if your St. Patrick’s Day peregrinations have left you with a pot of gold, please do whatever you can. YOU set the amount. You won’t catch us sneering at an Andrew Jackson or two. But the truth is, anything counts toward the 500. Once we hit 500 donations, we can collect over $14,000 in challenge money from our Bach Pot, and then the Bacchanal can begin in earnest. Please call us during business hours at 1-888-232-1212, or contribute anytime at wwfm.org (click on “Donate”).

To prime the pump, on this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” I’ll be presenting an hour of fabulous Bach recordings from the archive of the legendary music school and festival.

Forget the period instrument movement. Scholarship has its place, but these artists believed unwaveringly in the transcendent quality of Bach’s music and its ability to communicate across the ages.

These are Old School performances. You’ll hear pianos all over the place. Marlboro co-founder Rudolf Serkin will offer a sensitive interpretation of 14 canons on the aria ground from the “Goldberg Variations,” in a performance recorded at Marlboro in 1976.

Then the venerable Mieczyslaw Horszowski will join a Marlboro orchestra led by Felix Galimir for Bach’s Keyboard Concerto No. 7 in G minor, BWV 1058. The performance was captured in 1982, when the pianist was 90 years-old. Horszowski, who gave his first public performance in 1901(!), died in 1993, just shy of his 101st birthday. No doubt his extraordinary longevity can be attributed in part to his healthy and sustained immersion in music such as this.

And of course, we can’t have an hour of Marlboro Bach performances without hearing from Pablo Casals. The legendary cellist was affiliated with the Marlboro Music Festival for the last 13 years of his life, from 1960 to 1973. His loving, humanistic interpretations of Bach’s orchestral works form a remarkable capstone to an extraordinary career.

Don’t let the “festival orchestra” appellation deceive you. These are no ragtag assemblages of itinerant performers. The ensembles are made up of world-class artists and stars-of-tomorrow, many of whom maintained their relationships with Marlboro for years.

You don’t have to break the bank for Bach, but your contribution in any amount will make a difference. Call now at 1-888-232-1212 or click on “Donate” at wwfm.org. Then kick back and enjoy an hour of magical Bach performances on the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

Bach with Marlboro advocates (top to bottom) Pablo Casals, Mieczyslaw Horszowski & Felix Galimir, and Rudolf Serkin.