In the hands of a gifted group like Vox Luminis, Bach's motets exhibit the great composer's artistic genius as fully as anything else he wrote.
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Concert Review: Fretwork – ‘J.S. Bach – The Art of Fugue’ (NYC, 12 April 2018)
Bach's contrapuntal masterpiece took flight in the hands of one of the world's premiere viol consorts.
Read More »Music Review: Isabelle Faust and Kristian Bezuidenhout – ‘J.S. Bach: Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord’
All told, these are some of Bach's most compelling and beautiful works, and it's hard to imagine a finer performance than this.
Read More »Concert Review: MasterVoices – ‘The Saint John Passion’ by Bach at Carnegie Hall (NYC 9 Feb 2017)
The soloists shone both separately and in concert, as if distilling the work of the huge chorus behind them. I didn't want the penultimate piece, "O Sleep," sung by the chorus and then the soloists in counterpoint, to end.
Read More »Concert Review: PUBLIQuartet – ‘The New Baroque’ at the Met Cloisters (NYC, 11/5/2016)
The members of this adventurous quartet proved themselves masters of tonal variation, broad technique, and compositional creativity in a fascinating program that transformed and adapted Bach and Haydn and presented modern works that nod to the Baroque.
Read More »Music Review: Maya Beiser – ‘TranceClassical’
An intriguing plunge into the many sharp and woolly possibilities of the cello in the age of electronics and genre-blending.
Read More »Music Review: Craig Leon – ‘Bach to Moog: A Realisation for Electronics and Orchestra’
Ever wonder what Johann Sebastian Bach would sound like with a little '70s gloss on top? Good, actually. It sounds damn good.
Read More »Music Reviews: Meridian Arts Ensemble – ‘Alchemy’ and Matt Herskowitz Trio with Philippe Quint – ‘Bach XXI’
Two recent albums that do new things with very old music.
Read More »Concert Review: Chiara String Quartet and Simone Dinnerstein – Piano Quintets: Brahms and Friedman (NYC Nov. 13)
Jefferson Friedman's sharply modernistic but accessible new 'The Heart Wakes Into' paired nicely with Brahms's Quintet in F minor at the Metropolitan Museum.
Read More »Concert Review: Cellist Inbal Segev – Bach Cello Suites (NYC, Oct. 30, 2015)
As the boat rocked – luckily, mostly gently – Segev gave an account of these difficult pieces that was impressive both technically and idiomatically.
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