Der Spiegel 07 2014 (10.02.2014) Pdf

Harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt said that Bach had written his Art of Fugue for himself, without thought of performing it on any instrument in particular. In the presence of a speculative work, every musician is free to chisel the perfect lines of polyphony as he or she chooses. Up to the final canon, which continues to pose the question of its incompletion. It is the Franco-Swiss pianist Cédric Pescia, with his subtle, understated playing, who will make this sublime score sing. But he will do so on an untempered piano, which is hardly banal! After a first æon disc devoted to Cage, which created a tremendous stir, Cédric Pescia deploys a low-key art in Bach, a sense of rhythm combined with a rubato of extreme subtlety and an inventiveness in the phrasings and ornaments, both flowing and sharp, that have no equivalent in the discography. Such relief, such life!

Impressed by the Handel works that he heard in London, Haydn felt the need to compose oratorios. First came Die Schöpfung (‘The Creation’), which met with resounding success; then Baron Gottfried van Swieten proposed to Haydn an arrangement of James Thomson’s poem ‘The Seasons’. Initially, Haydn was little attracted by the text, which deviates from the classic oratorio based on a religious text, but subsequently let himself be convinced. The result, for three soloists, chorus and orchestra, is a vast pictorial fresco of Nature that describes landscapes and the feelings that they arouse. For the first time, Philippe Herreweghe gives us his own vision of an oratorium by Haydn.

In 2008 the Opernhaus Zurich staged this magnificent production starring virtuoso tenor Jonas Kaufmann as Don Jose? and the Bulgarian Vesselina Kasarova as the flirtatious prima-donna of the title role. Mezzo-soprano Kasarova is dazzling as the tough-as-nails, beautifully unsentimental heroine – think classic Sophia Loren meets West Side Story.
Kaufmann, in the guise of a Spanish police officer, brilliantly portrays the blustering but naive Don Jose? as a modern contrast of hard-edged machismo and out-of-his-depths vulnerability.

JS Bach's St John Passion is an intensely personal experience, bringing to life the humanity of the passion story. Combining raw viscerality with moments of exquisite intimacy, it was written soon after Bach’s arrival as Kantor at Leipzig’s Thomasschule. Keen to impress a new congregation, Bach produced a setting of the age-old passion story which overshadowed almost every piece of liturgical music the world had previously known. Our recording aims to capture the authenticity and vivacity of the very first Good Friday performance at Leipzig’s Nikolaikirche.

German pianist Holger Groschopp has emerged as something of a specialist in the voluminous body of transcriptions by Ferruccio Busoni. The most famous of these are treatments of Bach's music, but he also wrote arrangements and reworkings of Mozart, Liszt, and many other composers. This is a new recording of Bach transcriptions, made in 2011. Busoni's transcriptions are often heard singly on recital albums, but there's a lot to be said for hearing them in large groups, even for hearing the two CDs' worth here. It gets into the range of treatments Busoni applied, from massive Mahlerian attempts to encompass the world of the organ on piano, to studies in chromatic harmony, to quiet reverential treatments.

“Kurt Rydl crowns a fine stage career with a gloriously eccentric impersonation of La Roche…The singing honours belong entirely to Angelika Kirchschlager as Clairon.” (BBC Music Magazine). “this Countess's preference for 'Ton' over 'Wort' is clear from the start…The greatest pleasure of the performance, for me, undoubtedly comes in the wonderful playing of the Staatsoper orchestra, the sweet, tender strings and the mellifluous horns in particular; and Christoph Eschenbach conducts a leisurely and loving account of Strauss's gorgeous score.” (Gramophone Magazine)

Even though Angela Hewitt's repertoire is quite extensive and diverse, encompassing the Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and modern eras, her true specialty is the music of J.S. Bach, which she has recorded almost exclusively for Hyperion since the 1980s. With this recording of The Art of Fugue, Hewitt completes her long-running series of piano renditions of the solo keyboard works, and while not everyone is convinced that Bach composed this study of fugal techniques for the keyboard, Hewitt's performance is credible and satisfying. She controls the often unwieldy counterpoint by regarding the lines as if they were vocal parts, and her phrases are shaped by natural breathing points, as well as the different emotional qualities she brings to each fugue and canon. The Art of Fugue can be daunting for both performer and listener because its persistent tonality of D minor and monothematic material can be quite tedious in the wrong hands.