Bach
‘Some pianists make me shake with anger’: Vikingur Olafsson interviewed
At the BBC Proms this year, an Icelandic pianist dressed like a Wall Street broker played a slow movement from…
Playing until her fingers bled: the dedication of the pianist Maria Yudina
The 20th century was an amazing time for Russian pianists, and the worse things got, politically and militarily, the more…
This play is a wonder: Bach & Sons at the Bridge Theatre reviewed
Bach & Sons opens with the great composer tinkling away on a harpsichord while a toddler screeches his head off…
Alan Rusbridger on the joys of four-hand piano
One of the few social activities not yet prohibited under lockdown laws is four-handed piano playing. I don’t mean sitting…
Igor Levit’s Goldbergs were transcendental
Igor Levit has rapidly achieved cult status, as he certainly deserves. He has already reached the stage where he can…
Bach helped me survive Bergen-Belsen
One of the great joys of the 18th-century novella La petite maison is the way Jean-François de Bastide matches the…
As a symphonist, Mieczyslaw Weinberg was a master: Weinberg Weekend reviewed
It’s a strange compliment to pay a composer — that the most profound impression their music makes is of an…
The 280-mile walk that made Bach who he was
It was in his organ loft at Arnstadt that I began my acquaintance with Johann Sebastian Bach — with JSB,…
Speed limit
Slow radio is popping up everywhere at the moment — programmes that have no outward form but just meander through…
Vice and virtue
‘Can the ultimate betrayal ever be forgiven?’ screams the publicity for The Judas Passion, transforming a Biblical drama into a…
An orchestrated race storm
A fascinating story has emerged from a north-western leftie quadrant of the United States: the sacking of British conductor Matthew…
‘I could do many things... but I could not listen to Bach’
Six years ago, on Good Friday, the journalist Melanie Reid was thrown off her horse while on a cross-country ride…
Does the great Bach conductor Masaaki Suzuki think his audience will burn in hell?
Damian Thompson talks to the great Bach conductor — and strict Calvinist — Masaaki Suzuki
Why is the organ such hard work?
My old Oxford college, Mansfield, isn’t a famous establishment, though its current principal, ‘Baroness Helena Kennedy’, as she incorrectly styles…
Was Bach really a ‘tasteless and chaotic composer’?
It’s just not what you expect to hear on Radio 3 but I happened upon Music Matters on Saturday morning…
The polyphonous Babel of global music
‘Following custom, when the Siamese conquered the Khmer they carried off much of the population, including most of their musicians,…
The Heckler: why does John Eliot Gardiner have to be so rude?
Sir John Eliot Gardiner is talented almost beyond measure. His Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists and stupidly named Orchestre Révolutionnaire…
Our hero worship of Bach is to blame for rubbish like ‘Written By Mrs Bach’
My impression that Bach has come to rival Shakespeare as a flawless reference point in the cultural life of the…
You realise how little you know of anybody when they die
Whether or not you believe in the afterlife, death remains an impenetrable mystery. One moment a person is making jokes…
Wedding music lives or dies at the hands of the organist
A few weeks ago I was at the perfect wedding. My young friend Will Heaven, a comment editor at the…
The sofa that became a work of art
Last week on Front Row (Radio 4) the singer Joyce DiDonato recalled the advice she gave the new graduates of…
Why it's good to remember that Bach could be a tedious old windbag
When I was first learning about classical music, 50 years ago, the scene was more streamlined than it is now.…
Are hymns dying?
I love a good hymn, so long as I’m not expected to sing it. Lusty declarations of faith sound ridiculous…
The splendour of the English carol
Michael Henderson on the splendour of carols
