Bach
Classical CDs Weekly: Bach, Turina, Eleni KaraindrouSaturday, 09 March 2013![]() Bach: Harpsichord Concertos Retrospect Ensemble/Matthew Halls (harpsichord and director) (Linn)This release fizzes with energy. I’ve long preferred hearing these concertos played on a modern piano. But listening to Matthew Halls’s harpsichord... Read more... |
St Matthew Passion, Academy of Ancient Music, Choir of King's College Cambridge, Kings PlaceWednesday, 30 January 2013![]() Kings Place’s Bach Unwrapped season invites audiences to come at the composer from new and unexpected angles. Bach gets arranged, adapted and re-orchestrated, and his legacy is showcased in works from three centuries. Occasionally however he also... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Bach, Dvořák, GallaySaturday, 19 January 2013![]() Bach: The Six Cello Suites Peter Wispelwey (Evil Penguin Records) Bach’ s Cello Suites remained stubbornly off-limits to me until I read Eric Siblin’s affectionate, rambling book, The Cello Suites: In Search of a Baroque Masterpiece. I’m now a... Read more... |
Bach Unwrapped, Blaze, La Nuova Musica, Bates, Kings PlaceFriday, 04 January 2013![]() Faced with yet another world premiere from his friends in the Borodin Quartet, Shostakovich severely asked them whether they’d yet played all of Haydn’s quartets (they hadn’t). As a listener, I feel the same about Bach’s cantatas. Whether or not a... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Bach, Richard Rodney Bennett, SibeliusSaturday, 13 October 2012![]() Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier András Schiff (ECM)András Schiff was a finalist in the 1975 Leeds International Piano Competition. He came third – presumably having confounded expectations by playing Bach’s D minor keyboard concerto instead of... Read more... |
Tetzlaff, Wigmore HallThursday, 20 September 2012![]() When you hear Christian Tetzlaff play you hear Brahms, or Beethoven or, in this case, Bach. What you don’t hear a lot of is Tetzlaff himself. I mean that in the best possible way – so willing is the violinist to submerge himself, to set aside ego... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Cameron Carpenter/ Znaider, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, ChaillySunday, 02 September 2012![]() I'd love to see the stats on the last time a Prom was this packed for an afternoon organ recital. Were it not for the fact that organist Cameron Carpenter was sporting spandex trousers encrusted in silver glitter, a wife beater and Mohawk, you... Read more... |
BBC Proms: The English Concert and Choir, BicketFriday, 03 August 2012![]() What better work for Harry Bicket and The English Concert to perform at the Proms than Bach's joyous Mass in B Minor. Joyous firstly because of the music itself, with its vast stylistic and emotional range. Joyous secondly because, despite the... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Nielsen, Tchaikovsky, Reiko Fujisawa, The Dublin Drag OrchestraSaturday, 21 July 2012![]() Bach, Beethoven, Schubert Reiko Fujisawa (piano) (Quartz)Each of these three composers makes very specific, particular demands on a pianist’s technique. Playing Bach as sharply and as delicately as this doesn’t suggest that Reiko Fujisawa will... Read more... |
The Arts Desk Radio Show 5Thursday, 12 July 2012![]() Peter has just come back from Lagos, so the first part of the show is a brief tour d’horizon of the dynamic Nigerian pop scene, featuring Asa, Tiwa Savage, 2Face, Flavour and D’Banj, the “Koko-Master”, who has just had his first UK Top 10 hit with “... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Bach, Melton Tuba Quartett, OperaBabesSaturday, 09 June 2012![]() Bach: Brandenburg Concertos, Sinfonias Orchestra of the Antipodes/Antony Walker, Anna MacDonald, Erin Helyard (ABC Classics)Exactly why this set, recorded in Sydney in 2003, has waited so long for a commercial release is a bit of a puzzle.... Read more... |
Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Koopman, Christ Church SpitalfieldsSaturday, 09 June 2012![]() It’s one thing for UK Border Control to turn Heathrow’s Arrivals into a giant theme-park queue, but it’s quite another when they start messing with our music. Paperwork issues yesterday saw one Japanese and two Korean members of the Amsterdam... Read more... |
