Word: harpsichordist
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Europe's midsummer sun shone on a thriving crop of music festivals last week. Highlights: a new Wagner production, a brilliant new staging of Mozart's Magic Flute and an American harpsichordist playing Bach...
Ansbach's Bach. The eighth annual Bach Week at Ansbach, Germany, brought a personal triumph to Manhattan Harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick, 44. Facing a firm Teutonic conviction that only Germans can play Bach properly, Kirkpatrick made a bold decision. While he was playing his morning performance, word came that Guitarist Andres Segovia was sick and could not fill his engagement that evening. Kirkpatrick agreed to take over the spot, scheduled a finger-breaking program : the Italian Concerto, the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue and the Goldberg Variations...
...crowd of 500 crammed the crusty old castle's gold and white Prunksaal-chosen for its fine baroque acoustics-and waited to see how Kirkpatrick would survive. Massive and leonine behind his shell rims, the harpsichordist filled the concerto with muted and lyrical brilliance, the fantasy with stringent clarity, the variations with authoritative grandeur. Then, dead tired, he faced the crowd of critical Bach addicts, smiled like a boy as they cheered, clapped and stamped on the floor with enthusiasm...
Ansbach, Germany, for no reason except enthusiasm and the fact that the old Bach stronghold, Leipzig, is now behind the Iron Curtain, puts on its annual Bach festival (July 23-30). On hand: Spanish Guitarist Andrés Segovia, U.S. Harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick. Featured choral work: the B-Minor Mass...
Last week he was nestled in the respectable but unusual surroundings of Manhattan's Little Club, a dim East Side spot with some Broadway overtones, for a series of Sunday-midnight concerts. Looking a little like a pudgy, scholarly Satan, Harpsichordist Valenti threaded his way among the tables, mounted the platform and affectionately patted the maple-colored instrument. Then he launched into pieces by such 18th century composers as Rameau, Domenico, Scarlatti and Bach. The music was brief, gracefully decorated with trills and curlicues, and its precise pinpoints of sound and muffled thunder filled the small room better than...