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The Pure and the Impure
The only two things missing in Bach’s music are randomness and sex. And yet in our era – so consumed with both – Bach has not lost his appeal. Bach’s ongoing star quality and his endless DNA-like...
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András Schiff Reconsiders the Well-Tempered Clavier
In a recent interview with Fred Child on Performance Today, pianist András Schiff spoke about his life-long journey with Bach and his recent recording of The Well-Tempered Clavier (BWV 846-93). When...
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John Eliot Gardiner Conducts an Art Tour
Cupid Complaining to Venus “That certain artists and composers are of the same generation doesn’t always mean that there is a significant link between them. But Goya and Beethoven share the sense of...
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Rewriting Bach, As Bach Rewrote Others
Gustav Mahler in 1907 When Gustav Mahler arrived in New York in the winter of 1907-8 to take up his post as principal conductor of the Metropolitan Opera, he came as the champion of Wagner’s Tristan...
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An Albert Schweitzer Centenary
Albert Schweitzer This year nearly two hundred events will mark the hundredth anniversary of the founding in 1913 of the Hospital Lambaréné in Gabon, Central Africa, by Albert Schweitzer. Organ...
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After Three Centuries, Sheep Can Still Safely Graze
While employed in Weimar, Bach received a commission from the neighboring Saxe-Weissenfels court to compose a congratulatory cantata on the occasion of the thirty-first birthday of Duke Christian. The...
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Bach’s Blindness
Among medical mysteries involving master musicians, it doesn’t quite match the still-mysterious death of Mozart at age thirty-five. But precisely why Johann Sebastian Bach went totally blind less than...
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Breakthrough on St. John Passion
Every so often a performance comes along that is so novel, so radical, that it triggers an entire paradigm shift in the way we understand the great cornerstones of classical music. Sometimes that...
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The Thuringia Bach Festival
This year’s Thuringia Bach Festival will be the largest festival of classical music produced in the German Free State. Specializing in Baroque music performed in authentic sites, including the...
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Johann Sebastian Bach Jubiläumsbier
When one properly consumes a Johann Sebastian Bach Jubiläumsbier from a glass that features a golden rim, one first encounters something very nice: a medium fine, medium volumed head with many strands...
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Bach 360° on WQXR
New York Public Radio station WQXR presents Bach 360°, a ten-day, two-hundred-hour festival that explores how J. S. Bach resonates with today’s audiences. From 21 through 31 March 2013, the festival...
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Beyond Definition and Beyond Compare
Royal Albert Hall To appreciate some kinds of music, you have to be in the right mood. Adolescent angst is handy for Mahler’s vast, self-regarding symphonic canvases. A sense of adventure and a dose of...
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Sigiswald Kuijken’s Life with Bach
When the Belgian ensemble La Petite Bande (LPB) learned last year that the Flemish government was discontinuing its subsidies, founder Sigiswald Kuijken began to work with his ensemble’s leadership to...
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Bach at Leipzig: A Play
After the death of the highly respected organist of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, Germany, in 1722, a select group of composers gathers, all aspiring to this coveted position. The composers compete in...
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Duo Crezdi to Appear in Recital
Duo Crezdi In the final concert of the thirty-second season of the Boulder Bach Festival, Zachary Carrettin, violin, and Rick Erickson, harpsichord and organ, will join forces as Duo Crezdi in an...
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Genius – Genus – Generations
Why do we continue to hear countless repetitions of the story that Johann Sebastian Bach was forgotten after his death, only to be rediscovered in the nineteenth century? Long refuted, does this myth...
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Music Meets Science
The relationship between science, music and the arts has been demonstrated in various contexts. In the 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (Basic Books), for example, author Douglas...
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Jim Hunt Receives a Henry Award
Jim Hunt and Anthony Bianco in Bach at Leipzig Jim Hunt is one of the most respected, well-reviewed and best-loved actors in the Denver area. He has given memorable performances as a wheedling tramp in...
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Bach’s Perpetual Counterpoint
Canon à 4. Voc: perpetuus Bach’s life-long interest in canonic composition is manifest not only in the large-scale works devoted to exploring various contrapuntal techniques, but also in a number of...
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Entries from a Diary
Gerard Rochford, poet The winter was mild. Fewer deaths mean fewer funerals and my income fades. Spring however promises commissions: Easter, Ascension Thursday, Whitsun weddings. The dry summer...
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