Rifkin’s

When Joshua Rifkin began recording Bach vocal works to demonstrate his one-singer-per-part thesis, he started not with the lightly scored early cantatas but rather with the Holy of Holies–the B-Minor Mass. (Don't accuse the man of starting small.) Predictably, outrage ensued: detractors far outnumbered supporters at the time (though this seems to be gradually changing). Musicology or not, Rifkin's approach works. Bach's florid vocal parts are far more negotiable for soloists than for chorus; period instruments never overwhelm the voices. Certainly the standard of baroque- instrument playing, particularly brass, has improved since 1980; but Rifkin's instrumentalists, especially woodwinds, are quite listenable.

This recording combines the lyrical and rhythmic vitality of early 20th century Brazilian and American popular music with Rifkin's thoughtful and artistic realization, in much the same way as his 1970's recordings of Joplin piano works did on the Nonesuch label. As with those recordings, the sound here is good and the performances excellent. Various different interpretations of Nazareth, Scott, and Lamb exist, and some might find the slower pace of Rifkin's ragtime playing eccentric, but I believe these performances to be subtle and truly musical, as opposed to surface and expected.

On 2 March 1714, barely three weeks before his twenty-ninth birthday, the Weimar court organist Johann Sebastian Bach received "the title of Concertmaster." Shortly before he had turned down an important organist's position in Halle; the promotion to concertmaster, granted "at his most humble request," clearly represented a quid pro quo on the part of his employer, Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Saxe-Weimar. As the principal condition of his new post Bach had the obligation "to perform new pieces every month"—in today's parlance, to produce a new cantata on a monthly basis.

Après avoir théorisé la Troisième Révolution industrielle («La Troisième Révolution industrielle», LLL, 2012), Jeremy Rifkin s’attaque à la notion de « New Deal Vert ». Il s’agit d’un projet économique et de société, fruit d’une prise de conscience mondiale sur l’état de la planète. Le but : sauver la vie sur Terre, tout simplement. …

This is a beautiful CD. On it is a collection of some of Vivaldi' best concertos played on authentic instruments with light, transparent textures, brisk tempi and real excitement. An absolute delight!

Andrew Parrott was the first conductor to adopt Joshua Rifkin's controversial one-singer-per-part approach to Bach's "choral" music (other than Rifkin himself, that is). On the whole, Parrott and his ensemble make a good case for both one-per-part practice and their own performances. Once the ear adjusts, the balance is excellent: the vocal parts don't dominate the orchestra (as many listeners accustomed to a chorus expect); they are equal partners with it–which suits Bach's intricate and often dense writing for instruments and voices.

The Prelude and Fugue in E Minor forms a frame, as it did in Bach’s time, around this program, designed to fit the liturgical format that gave Bach’s music its purpose; the Fantasia precedes the motet on which it is based and follows Cantata BWV 64, which quotes the fifth stanza of Johann Franck’s poem “Jesu, meine Freude.” The recording was made in the Arnstadt church where Bach served from 1703 to 1707 (the 1699 organ has recently been restored), but the two cantatas and the motet date from his first year in Leipzig. This impressive presentation, the first in a series called Bach in Context, is a hardbound book of 84 pages. The notes favor Joshua Rifkin’s understanding of one voice to a part in Bach’s vocal/choral music, the use of a harpsichord as well as the church organ (not the more versatile chest organ), and the liturgical context in which the music was originally sung.

Scott Joplin: Piano Rags is a 1970 ragtime piano album, consisting of compositions by Scott Joplin played by Joshua Rifkin, on the Nonesuch Records label. The original album's cover states the name as Piano Rags by Scott Joplin, as contrasting the album's spine. The record is considered to have been the first to reintroduce the music of pianist and composer Joplin in the early 1970s. It was Nonesuch Records' first million-selling album.