The Whole Music Experience

Isabelle Faust J.S. Bach Sonatas & Partitas Harmonia Mundi Isabelle Faust’s new recording of J.S. Bach’s Partitas & Sonatas reveals a different side of Bach’s repertoire for a solo instrument.   Not the first time I have heard these sonatas and partitas performed on a violin, this time I hear the lush polyphony sung by this single instrument.   As one passage lingers in the air resonating, a new one superimposes over it creating a rich sonic environment.   At times, it feels like Faust’s instrument has split into two musical personalities conversing with each other.   Listening to this recording on headphones offers a musical retreat that alternates between relaxing the mind and invigorating the body. Faust is easily one of the best violinists working today interpreting German and Austrian composers.   The violinist’s sensitivity melded with her technical brilliance wrings emotions out of every note she plays.   From slow melancholic...

Céline Moinet J.S. Bach, Berio, Britten Oboe Harmonia Mundi The oboe has always fascinated me.  The instrument’s timbre falls somewhere between a cornet, English horn, and flute--so mysterious and alternately melancholy. If you asked me to single out the sound of the oboe in an orchestra, there’s a good chance that I’ll mistake the oboe for an English horn.  On Céline Moinet’s recording Oboe , the musician explores diverse territory ranging from the baroque architecture of J.S. Bach and then skipping ahead several hundred years to modern composers Elliott Carter, Luciano Berio and Benjamin Britten. By bringing compositions by those composers, we might end up thinking that J.S. Bach was ahead of his time as far as polyphonies played on a single instrument. However, the Bach pieces that Moinet chose for this recording, (both father and son, CPE Bach's work), were originally composed for transverse flute. Still that doesn’t stop Moinet’s oboe from resembling a...

A Romance on Three Legs Glenn Gould’s Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano Katie Hafner Bloomsbury USA In 1982 or 1983 I experienced a supernatural encounter in a department store in north Bellingham. My mother and I both recall me walking up to one of those electronic keyboards in fashion at the time, turning it on, and then playing something virtuosic. I only remember turning the keyboard on and then waking from a trance and seeing a small crowd of people standing around applauding. My mother recalls the actual impromptu performance. Prior to this “episode” I had never taken piano lessons, thought I sucked as a musician based on a personal tragedy I experienced when I auditioned for the high school band and I had nearly flunked music theory at Western Washington University. I had given up the notion of ever pursuing my dream career as a musician or composer until a boost of confidence from the department store incident changed the course of my life. That was my firs...

J.S. Bach Les Six Concerts Brandebourgeois Le Concert des Nations/Jordi Savall Aliavox Heritage/Harmonia Mundi I’m certainly not a Bach scholar by any stretch, but I’ve been listening to J.S. Bach’s work during the past few years simply because I find the composer’s music healing. In my research, I have read many references to the perfect architecture of the baroque composer’s sacred and secular compositions. As a freelance music composer living during an era of patrons (church and aristocracy), much of the composer’s work was for hire. Virtuoso musicians, church officials, and members of the elite class would commission works, not just of Bach, but his contemporaries too. It’s not as if we live in an era void of musicians-for-hire because musical works are still commissioned and composers still make a living off of commissioned work. However, most of us non-classical, (outside of theatrical and film soundtrack work), musicians have a difficult time conceiving of writing m...