Word: bachs
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Wednesday evening found Kipnis at nearby Mather House for a dinner with students and an informal lecture and recital in the SCR, featuring works by Bach, Handel, Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck and the Beatles, among others. Everywhere in his performance he displayed both astonishing technical ability and sensitive musical interpretation...
...some extent too, we tend to think of eccentricity as the prerogative, even the hallmark, of genius. And genius is its own vindication. Who cared that Glenn Gould sang along with the piano while playing Bach, so long as he played so beautifully? Even the Herculean debauches of Babe Ruth did not undermine so much as confirm his status as a legend...
Some 2 1/2 centuries after Bach welded the twelve major and minor keys into a harmonious whole in The Well-Tempered Clavier, 185 years after Beethoven stretched the boundaries of the symphony with the "Eroica," and 65 years after Arnold Schoenberg exploded the tonal universe by unleashing the power of the twelve-tone system, classical music can still be a vital, potent art. But it needs a kind of panoramic energy, one that explores and prizes its past, frankly assesses its present and enthusiastically prepares for its future...
...calls the "one-handed roll": one hand plays two notes tremolo while the other picks out a tune. In his hands, the marimba has gone from being a useful but limited foot soldier in the percussion battery to a beguiling melodic instrument fully equal to the contrapuntal subtleties of Bach's Two-Part Inventions...
...Stevens' new Musicmasters album Bach on Marimba, a selection of the Inventions (originally written for a keyboard instrument) leap and dance crisply, while the chorale Christ lag in Todesbanden shimmers and glows. "With the xylophone, you hear more brittleness," explains Stevens. "With the marimba you hear the air column, a mellow, captivating sound that is rich in bass, like an organ...