Word: bache
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Johann Sebastian Bach seemed to have no understanding of his own greatness. Year after year, he turned out his glorious cantatas and Passions like a baker hurrying over the breakfast rolls. He considered the music that flowed from his pen for 50 years to be a collection of testimonials to honest craftsmanship-some of it better than others, but all of it composed, as he humbly wrote in the dedication of the Musical Offering, "as well as I possibly could...
...gave little thought to the preservation of his works, and the scores he left behind contain few indications of the tempo, dynamics or phrasing he intended. As a result, every participant in the current flowering of appreciation for Bach is his own final authority on interpretation. The varieties of approach that were heard last week in the annual Christmas celebration of Bach's music gave proof of the continuing depth of the argument...
...Bach's modern interpreters have brought to his varied music all the resources of modern instrumentation-and all the scholarly weight of a new musicology that insists on a strictly paleontological presentation. One side, mainly distinguished by the presence of Eugene Ormandy, plays Bach with a flourish and sensuality better saved for Wagner; the other side, which at its extreme is manned by cliques of musical pedants who play in ensembles with names like Pro Arta Antarctica, believes Bach must never be played away from the harpsichord and organ. In the artistic center of the interpretive storm...
...sweetest Christmas music Berliners have heard in more than two years had nothing to do with Bach or Handel. It was the ugly stutter of jackhammers tearing gates in the Berlin Wall, the whine of cranes removing zigzag barriers from heavily guarded crossing points. Then, late last week, the candy-stripe customs poles went up, and thousands of grinning, gift-laden West Berliners swarmed through the Wall for their first reunions with eastern sector relatives since August 1961. A long row of glowing charcoal braziers warmed the approach to the Oberbaum Bridge, and two brightly lit Christmas trees guarded...
Benjamin Britten: War Requiem (London). Britten conducts the Bach and Highgate school choirs and the London Symphony Orchestra (Vishnevskaya, Pears and Fischer-Dieskau, soloists) in a reverent performance...