In Three Notch’d Road’s latest recording, ‘Shining Shore: Music of Early America,’ the Charlottesville group has mined the rich heritage of its own musically fertile region, presenting a fresh, inviting line-up of short songs and instrumental works that were likely heard in Virginia or its preceding colony from the late 17th-to mid-19th-centuries.
CD Review: Music of Early America from Three Notch’d Road Read More »
Pietro Castrucci is not well enough known. He studied violin with Arcangelo Corelli, moved to London in 1715, and served as leader of Handel’s opera orchestra. Castrucci often performed with Handel and another of Corelli’s students in London, Francesco Geminiani. Although Castrucci’s compositional output is relatively small, his incredible invention and skill are much to be admired. This recording is the first complete set of his Op. 1 sonatas, a welcome addition to the Baroque violin repertoire.
CD Review: Strikingly Original Music from Handel’s Violinist Read More »
American pianist David Hyun-su Kim’s historically informed recording of three familiar Robert Schumann masterworks—Papillons, Carnaval, and Arabeske—is brilliant artistry indeed. And his instrument is of special interest: a copy of an 1830s Graf fortepiano, made in 2013 by Rod Regier of Freeport, Maine, and based on an instrument given by Conrad Graf to Robert and Clara as a wedding present. Kim is sensitive to Schumann’s mercurial mood shifts, and he uses the fortepiano for sounds and effects that are hard to achieve on a modern instrument.
CD Review: On Fortepiano, Schumann that Rivals Golden Age Pianists Read More »
Pinchon and his superb singers and ensemble offer an immersive, all-encompassing experience. Throughout, they let Bach’s dance rhythms propel music and narrative. The conductor’s attention to relative weights and specific articulations adds a dimension of almost sensual physicality—the emotions expressed here are vividly embodied, not abstract prayers, What makes this interpretation a significant contribution to the vast Matthäus-Passion discography is the admirable balance it finds between dramatic, contemplative, and even architectural approaches, too often taken as polarities.
CD Review: An Urgent ‘St. Matthew Passion’ for Our Time Read More »
This fascinating book—rich in historical and analytical detail—offers many surprising reevaluations of long-held beliefs. With essays ranging from consumer culture in Bach’s Leipzig and Bach’s humor to an outright dismissal of ‘Affektenlehre’ and heated questions of antisemitism, the book is always provocative, often controversial, and smartly argued.
Book Review: We’ve thought a lot about Bach. Time for ‘Rethinking Bach.’ Read More »
