Tag: Bach
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PROGRAM NOTES: IGOR LEVIT
Johann Sebastian Bach Chaconne in D minor BWV 1004 (arr. Brahms) The Bach revival of the 19th century began with a performance of the St. Matthew Passion in Berlin in 1829, conducted by the 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn. It reached its stride at mid-century with the founding, by Robert Schumann and others, of the Bach-Gesellschaft, a society…
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PROGRAM NOTES: SCHAGHAJEGH NOSRATI
Johann Sebastian Bach GOLDBERG VARIATIONS BWV 988 Historical Background Such was Bach’s mastery of his musical materials that he was often tempted to explore a particular genre or compositional technique in a systematic way by providing a quasi-exhaustive compendium of its possibilities. Fugue, for example, is represented in the two books of The Well-Tempered Clavier…
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PROGRAM NOTES: DOVER QUARTET & AVI AVITAL
Sulkhan Tsintsadze Six Miniatures for String Quartet and Mandolin (arr. Ohan Ben-Ari) The Soviets promoted the ideal of music rooted in the traditions of their native soil and in this regard it would be hard to find a composer more congenial to Soviet ideals than Sulkhan Tsintsadze, one of the leading composers of the Soviet…
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PROGRAM NOTES: WINTERLUDE – SUITE SATURDAY WITH JEAN-GUIHEN QUEYRAS
A Bit of History Few scholars doubt that Western music was better off for the release of a certain “Bach, Johann Sebastian” from the county jail in Weimar where he had languished, in unsuitable company, for the better part of a month in the autumn of 1717. Court organists can be a stroppy crew at…
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PROGRAM NOTES: THE DANISH STRING QUARTET
Johann Sebastian Bach Well-Tempered Clavier II Fugue No. 7 in E-flat major BWV 876 (arr. Mozart) In 1782 Mozart’s patron, Baron Gottfried van Swieten, showed the composer a number of manuscripts of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach and encouraged him to make string arrangements for performance at the Baron’s regular series of Sunday afternoon…
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PROGRAM NOTES: CHRISTIAN TETZLAFF
Eugène Ysaÿe Sonata for solo violin in G minor, Op. 27, No. 1 Belgian violinist and composer Eugène Ysaÿe stands as a bridge figure between the late Romantic era of virtuoso violinists such as Henri Vieuxtemps and Henryk Wieniawski (he studied with both of them), and twentieth-century composers such as Debussy, whom he championed. Much loved by…
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PROGRAM NOTES: MURRAY PERAHIA
Johann Sebastian Bach: French Suite No. 4 in E flat major, BWV 815 Bach composed suites for keyboard, for various solo chamber instruments, and for full orchestra, each comprising a varied and aesthetically balanced collection of dance movements written in the fashionable style of his day. The harmonic task given to each two-section dance is…
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PROGRAM NOTES: AVI AVITAL
Avi Avital: Kedma “To open the concert, I have chosen to perform a composition- improvisation of my own. Unlike a composer’s relationship to an instrument and to a musical form, the performer’s relationship to his instrument, as in this case, is expressed in a frequent dialogue to “get to know” each other better. This improvisation,…
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PROGRAM NOTES: BENJAMIN GROSVENOR
J. S. Bach: Five transcriptions Benjamin Grosvenor opens his program with a series of piano transcriptions, a genre that was wildly popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, then went out of fashion, and is now making something of a comeback. Transcription – the transferal from one medium to another – is as…
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PROGRAM NOTES: ANDRAS SCHIFF PERFORMS BACH
J. S. Bach: Well-Tempered Clavier One of the monumental landmarks in the history of music, Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier (the WTC for short) has come to represent the “Old Testament” of the pianist’s repertory (Hans von Bülow) and his “daily bread” (Robert Schumann). “For more than 250 years,” states Davitt Moroney, “Das wohltemperierte Clavier has…
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ANDRÁS SCHIFF: ON PLAYING BACH AND THE WELL-TEMPERED CLAVIER
Senza pedale ma con tanti colori (Without the pedal but with plenty of colours) Playing J. S. Bach’s keyboard music on the modern piano, pianists are confronted with various fundamental questions. The answers to these are never simple. For example: what is the “correct” instrument for the Well-Tempered Clavier? The clavichord, the harpsichord, the organ,…
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SOME THOUGHTS ON OUR UPCOMING 12-13 SEASON
Today we want to share with you a few thoughts and facts about our recently announced 2012-2013 season: UP FIRST: On October 5 András Schiff will open the 33rd season with an all-Bach program. In fact, András was one of the first artists who launched the Vancouver Recital Society in 1981. Like so many…
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PROGRAM NOTES: KIRILL GERSTEIN
Johann Sebastian Bach English Suite no. 6 in D minor, BWV 811 Bach’s Partitas, English Suites and French Suites – six of each – collectively rank among the glories of the keyboard literature. Each is a four-part sequence of dance movements, all in the same key but varied by rhythm, tempo and mood: Allemande, Courante,…
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LEILA GETZ: WHY I LOVE ANDRAS SCHIFF
Yesterday I watched a video on the VRS YouTube channel featuring pianist Shai Wosner playing the concluding portion of Schumann’s “Carnaval”. I enjoyed it very much. As the video concluded, another video on the YouTube sidebar caught my eye: András Schiff playing the Andantino from Schubert’s Sonata in A Major, D959. I clicked on it…
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MURRAY PERAHIA…REMINISCENCES
Murray Perahia first came onto my radar in 1972 when he won the Leeds International Piano Competition. I knew Murray’s playing through his recordings but didn’t have the opportunity to hear him live for the first time until 1983, when on a visit to London I was able to attend a recital he gave at…