Word: bachs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Cambridge Society for Early Music concluded its highly successful series of three concerts last Monday with a program devoted to instrumental works by Corelli and Handel. One again, the series filled Sanders Theatre, plainly showing this area's enthusiasm for the music of Handel, Bach, and their predecessors. In fact, this is the sixth Cambridge concert in about as many weeks wholly devoted to music composed before 1759. I sometimes wonder if some daring artist could be found to venture a local program including Schubert, Franck, or Dvorak...
...four, Landowska expressed herself on the piano while other children were learning to talk. Her first teacher, recognizing her precocious virtuosity, let her play whatever music pleased her. But "a stern, dry man" took his place, and "my delightful roamings through the gavottes and bourrées of Bach were at an end." She was very unhappy. "I dream only one thing, when I am grown to play only Bach, Haydn and Mozart." She sealed this vow in an envelope, to be opened "when I am a big girl. But I opened it the next day, of course...
...accomplished musician whose professors agreed that they had nothing further to teach her, and set off on her own, giving concerts throughout Europe. But Landowska had no desire to dazzle concert audiences in the accepted manner: "I have always been in revolt." Her beloved cantor of Leipzig, Bach-and his contemporaries-had vanished from the piano repertory. Instead, performers who believed that the old master had no notion of the keyboard's capabilities served up a hybrid fare under the names of Bach-Liszt, Bach-Tausig, or Bach-Bülow. "They put Bach, Mozart, Handel back...
Although she has made as many as 150 concert appearances in a season, Mme. Landowska now rarely appears in public. "At last I have learned the key to the mystery. I must be concentrated about my work." Most of her time is dedicated to making her recordings of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, her "last will and testament...
...face at the mention of her "ghosts." This small empress in exile from her time has lived with them for most of her life. For her they are alive. And it is entirely conceivable that if one day her door should open, bringing a visitor named J. S. Bach into her instrument-cluttered, timeless room, Wanda Landowska would not so much as lift her bird's-wing eyebrows in surprise. She would probably continue the conversation she has been having with him across the strings for the past half-century...