Bach’s Art of Fugue One of the regretably few performances of Bach’s music to be featured in the BBC Proms this year is one of his most fascinating – his Art of Fugue BWV 1080. Perhaps a better and more appealing title for this collection of fugues (each called Contrapunctus) and canons could be The [...]
“Champions of the Baroque” – A response to Sir Colin Davis’s remarks in The Independent, 23 March 2012 Following the recent and typically trenchant comments made by Sir Colin Davis on ‘historically informed’ performances of Bach, Handel, Mozart through to Berlioz etc, I think there is real misunderstanding here. LBS has a vested interest in this [...]
The death of the distinguished harpsichordist and director Gustav Leonhardt in Holland on 16 January closes one of the most important chapters in the history of European Music over the last half century. He was perhaps the last living ‘true pioneer’ of historically informed performances of Bach, daring to challenge accepted thinking from the 1950s as Europe emerged from the [...]
Sometimes I feel that this beloved country of ours has an Honours Degree, **First, in talking itself into the brimstone pit! OK, so we have a problem getting our young people into concert halls to hear Bach and Beethoven. That is accepted…but equally, we also have a problem getting them into the Polling Booths to [...]
