Bach
Taking Time to Listen
This week, a close friend of mine emailed me in a panic: she is getting married in two weeks and needed some suggestions for repertoire that could be played during the ceremony. She has hired a solo cellist and so I thought of the Bach Suites, which are not only enjoyable to the ears, but can be lengthened or shortened as required by omitting/taking repeats — necessary for any good wedding piece. She wanted to hear examples and I created a list for her on YouTube, where there are numerous performances by Mstislav Rostropovich of the Suites. There are worse ways of spending an evening and I wound up listening to many of the available clips even after sending her my suggestions.
Why improvise? A Review of Gabriela Montero’s New Album “Baroque”
In one of his countless interviews Friedrich Gulda remarked that those who cross boundaries are considered by society either as “revolutionaries or fools.” That, like so many of Gulda’s views, is somewhat exaggerated and simplistic, but there lies a kernel of truth in this assessment: going beyond the boundaries of our ordered world, one can either discover a land of wonderful possibilities or shipwreck in a stormy sea losing orientation and direction.
Nachtseite der Vernunft
Having just returned from a trip to Munich today, I found the new program for the Salzburg Festival 2007 in my mailbox! As you probably all know the festival has a new artistic director (Jürgen Flimm). Since Flimm is a opera/theater person he has put Markus Hinterhäuser in charge for the concert events at the […]
New Bach Manuscripts Discovered
Since I am currently in Austria, and therefore not reading any news, I did not realize until today that our colleagues Peter Wollny and Michael Maul at the Bach-Archiv have come up with yet another Bach discovery. A couple of months after the spectacular find of an unknown Bach aria, they uncovered two music manuscripts […]
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