Gramophone Focus: recording Bach today
Gramophone
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
This week on the Gramophone website we are focusing on how leading Bach interpreters approach recording Bach's works for today's audiences
Sir John Eliot Gardiner's remarkable new recording of Bach's St Matthew Passion is Gramophone's Recording of the Month in the latest (April) issue, so we thought that this would be a good opportunity to reflect on how Bach's music is performed and recorded today. We've gathered together some revealing interviews with some of the leading Bach interpreters of our time – including Gardiner, John Butt, Rachel Podger, Masaaki Suzuki and Angela Hewitt – to reveal how Bach's music continues to inspire a variety of musical approaches, and why there can never be a 'final word' in Bach performance.
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Recording Bach's Cantatas, with Masaaki Suzuki and Bach Collegium Japan
Masaaki Suzuki has finally completed his project to record the complete church cantatas of JS Bach. But what has been driving this quiet Japanese musician to tackle one of the greatest achievements in Western music? Lindsay Kemp travels to Kobe to find out...
Recording Bach's The Art of Fugue, with Angela Hewitt
Philip Clark meets the Canadian pianist at her home in north London to journey into the much misunderstood musical maze that is Bach’s The Art of Fugue...
Reconstructing Bach's Magnificat, with John Butt and the Dunedin Consort
Bach’s initial Christmas Day Vespers as Thomaskantor was an overt display of music-making, with his Magnificat taking pride of place. For the Dunedin Consort’s new recording, John Butt has reconstructed the whole service as Bach might have celebrated it in 1723, writes David Vickers...
Recording Bach's The Art of Fugue, with Rachel Podger
Bach’s Art of Fugue may be an intellectual work but, as violinist Rachel Podger tells Peter Quantrill, it has wit and humanity too...
Sir John Eliot Gardiner returns to Bach's B minor Mass
Thirty years after his first recording, Gardiner returns to this towering summit of Western music with the same forces as before. By Lindsay Kemp...
The 50 greatest Bach recordings
Complete with the original Gramophone reviews of 50 of the finest JS Bach recordings available...
