Tag: VRS
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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: EVGENY KISSIN
Frédéric Chopin and Robert Schumann “…calling it a sonata is a caprice if not a jest for Chopin seems to have taken four of his most unruly children and put them together possibly thinking to smuggle them, as a sonata, into company where them might not be considered individually presentable.” That’s the perceptive way Robert…
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PROGRAM NOTES: GEORGE LI
Franz Joseph Haydn Sonata in B minor Hob. XVI:32 It is not often that you catch the congenial, ever-chipper Haydn writing in a minor key. But minor keys were all the rage in the 1770s, the age of Sturm und Drang (storm and stress), an age when composers such as C. P. E. Bach sought to…
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PROGRAM NOTES: MURRAY PERAHIA
Johann Sebastian Bach French Suite No. 6 in E Major BWV 817 The spirit of the dance can be felt across a wide range of Bach’s works, from the fugues of the Well-Tempered Clavier to the Mass in B minor. For Bach lovers with toes eager to tap, then, an entire suite of dance pieces…
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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…