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…