The music of Александр Скрябин is not in regular rotation around here, but just as you might go on a short health kick eating kale salads for a week to realign your body, I too must take departures from my study of…
Recorded at the Philharmonie de Paris and one and a half years after releasing his magnum opus ‘Music For Animals’ — described by PopMatters as “a musical waterfall of monumental proportions” — Nils Frahm shares a new…
The booklet of this new release from Tristano-Schlimé communicates the artist's desire, he writes, to record all of Bach’s keyboard music.
The Canadian Trio Fibonacci—whose name I admire for having written three fanfares some years ago based on numerical constructions based on the so-called Fibonacci sequence—have played a game of sorts in presenting an…
I am looking at two albums with Glass's Sonata for piano. Several recordings exist now of the Glass Etudes, all twenty across two books.
Upon the Swiss label Prospero comes a new release of Bach on piano. The word “rare” is an interesting choice for the title of this album, one connoting undercooked meat or another describing something available in…
I am certain the only time I’ve made mention of Max Richter before was in connection with his re-write of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.
Du Tianqi must have the patience of Job, recording this debut album in late 2018—with the heavyweight Goldberg Variations—having to wait until 2022 until the album was released.
This performer’s name – Christopher O’Riley – was new to me. His website reveals he’s a teacher in addition to a performer, bringing particular focus to his work from Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier.
I’ve been enjoying Evan Goldfine’s Year of Bach project. From him, I learned about Evan Shinners, a Bach specialist.
Musicians can’t seem to get enough of arranging Bach’s music. The practice isn’t isolated to non-historical types either; even harpsichordists and baroque violinists have turned to playing Bach on instruments for which…
The number of recordings of Bach’s violin concertos—even those not left to us as violin concertos—numbers high, although nothing compared to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.
This recording is of interest for several reasons; Henri Demarquette is an artist I’m unfamiliar with, and well, the notes describe the special way they recorded these suites. And the music? We know the music is good…
The title of this album may have been better stated as “Trumpet(s) for Handel.” It’s a chock-full release of some of Handel’s best hits arranged for one or two trumpets with piano.
The mandolin specialist Avi Avital writes in the booklet notes that he was inspired as a nineteen year-old by Il Giardino Armonico and the sound of a period mandolin, not to mention the energy that IGA was known for in…
YouTube this past week brought me a glimpse to the artistry of Pius Cheung, a marimba player I’d encountered before.
Keith Jarrett records the six “Württemburg” sonatas by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach on ECM New Series. This recording came as a surprise.
Marion Ralincourt took an interesting page from her own experiences from flute study to put the music of Johann Sebastian Bach (on a wooden “transverse” flute) and Steve Reich (on modern, metallic, keyed flutes)…
The second and third installments of SLIXS’ album Quer Bach presents some of the cantor’s best hits realized in an affective acappella style.
Yaara Tal released this album in August 2021, a collection of fugues played on the piano. The inspiration is Johann Sebastian Bach, but his own works are joined by other composers up to the present day.
Spanish musicians Moises P. Sanchez, Pablo M. Caminero, and Pablo M. Jones join forces on this album to present Bach’s fifteen inventions (BWV 772-786) within a jazz envelope.
In an interestingly-titled album, recent Sibelius-winner Inmo Yang records a likewise interesting mix of pieces featuring the violin.
Elaine Funaro (Arabasque Recordings, 2011) Every holiday season there’s a hunt on for merging old with new when it comes to Christmas music.
The piano music by Philip Glass seems to not have waned in popularity; over the past two weeks two new recordings of piano music have come across my radar.
The short of this new recording is that I think it offers some insight into some interesting if not original interpretive ideas about Bach’s cello suites by an artist who has some amazing technical powers.
I first experienced Bach’s Goldberg Variations by the harpsichordist Trevor Pinnock. From memory, that recording was clean; Pinnock, as ever, was metronome sharp with very clean playing.
Eloise Bella Kohn and Daniil Trifonov have released in the past few months their own performances of Bach’s Art of Fugue (BWV 1080) on piano.
Bach’s Art of Fuguing as I like to refer to it, speaking of the word fugue as a verb rather than a noun, is considered by many his last work. There is a legitimate reason for this belief.
Despite my first and strongest love for Baroque repertoire, I took in my college years a liking to minimalism from a academic perspective, the idea of a conserving musical ideas to the point of doing something more…
One might view the act of re-composition as the greatest form of flattery, or, on the other side of the coin, as a lazy attempt at composition.
The saxophone rightly has a number of associations to it; from today’s popular culture we could picture a jazz musician in a dark club, or Kenny G playing holiday favorites.
At this point in my preference for taking on new albums of familiar works—in this case the seven toccatas for keyboard by Johann Sebastian Bach—I’m looking for an interpretation that defies convention, offering…
Starting in high school and into college, I was always a fan of the NBC hit series Seinfeld. One of my favorite lines comes from an encounter with Elaine Benice in a publisher's office, amid a discussion of Jackie…
While I hadn’t been thinking about the pedagogical approach of my music theory professor in college, he defined for us a particular canon of pieces that we would end up studying intently over the two years I had with him.
Les Enfants Terribles is a chamber opera by Philip Glass that has been released here as a suite for two pianos, performed by the Labèque sisters and arranged by Glass collaborator Michael Riesman.
Released in February of 2018, Paddle to the Sea features music by Philip Glass, Musekiwa Chingodza, Jacob Druckman, and the Third Coast Percussion ensemble.
Vikingur Olafsson has recorded a new album featuring pieces by Claude Debussy and Jean-Philippe Rameau. The pairing might seem off, if it wasn't for both composers being French, and too, that Debussy in 1905 wrote a…
Orchester Le Phénix joins forces with pianist Alena Cherny to perform seven solo concertos for keyboard by J. S. Bach. Curious to me from the outset was a harpsichord set played on... piano. Why? Aren't we past that?
Of Handel’s collections of concerti grossi, opus 3 fits onto one CD; opus 6 requires two. In their career of thirty years recording baroque music, Musica Antiqua Köln never recorded much Handel, and never recorded the…
Johann Sebastian Bach. Johann Sebastian Bach (keyboard pieces and arrangements). Víkingur Ólafsson, piano. DG, (p) 2018; Time: 78:00; Rating: (5/5).