Fugue

A stress injury to a finger has caused pianist Helene Grimaud to cancel performances, including one in Baltimore. She had been scheduled to open the Shriver Hall Concert Series on Sept. 21. Stepping in for Grimaud will be Angela Hewitt, who last appeared on the series in 2012. A noted Bach specialist, Hewitt will perform "The Art of Fugue" (complete) for the Shriver Hall recital, a work she has recently recorded.  

A stress injury to a finger has caused pianist Helene Grimaud to cancel performances, including one in Baltimore. She had been scheduled to open the Shriver Hall Concert Series on Sept. 21. Stepping in for Grimaud will be Angela Hewitt, who last appeared on the series in 2012. A noted Bach specialist, Hewitt will perform "The Art of Fugue" (complete) for the Shriver Hall recital, a work she has recently recorded.  

The wonder that is Leon Fleisher chalks up yet another remarkable achievement with yesterday's release of what is only his second recording of two-hand piano music in more than four decades. Leon Fleisher: The Journey, from Vanguard Classics, offers renewed evidence that, at 78, the Baltimore-based keyboard artist keeps pushing back the twilight of his career to enjoy another gratifying day in the sun. Denied the full use of his right hand in 1964 due to a neurological disorder called dystonia, Fleisher has in recent years returned to ambidexterity, thanks to injections of Botox.

The wonder that is Leon Fleisher chalks up yet another remarkable achievement with yesterday's release of what is only his second recording of two-hand piano music in more than four decades. Leon Fleisher: The Journey, from Vanguard Classics, offers renewed evidence that, at 78, the Baltimore-based keyboard artist keeps pushing back the twilight of his career to enjoy another gratifying day in the sun. Denied the full use of his right hand in 1964 due to a neurological disorder called dystonia, Fleisher has in recent years returned to ambidexterity, thanks to injections of Botox.

After a bumpy - make that rainy and muddy - start to its outdoor concert season at Oregon Ridge early last week, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra opened its indoor Summer MusicFest in the safety of Meyerhoff Symphony Hall Friday night. The program, also presented the night before at the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda, was billed as "The Best of Baroque." It was nothing of the kind. Not an unadulterated note of Bach or Handel or Vivaldi to be found. Better to have called it "The Best of Big Band Baroque," since most of the concert held full-orchestra, larger-than-life transcriptions of music originally written for smaller forces.

Johann Sebastian Bach cast a giant shadow over every musical genre he touched.His masses and cantatas still define for us the essence of sacred song. Pianists and harpsichordists denied access to his inventions, partitas and toccatas would think life not worth living, while Bach's orchestral suites and instrumental concertos bristle with the energy of the baroque style.But the most monumental Bach compositions of all might be the ones the master crafted for his own use.Bach was one of the greatest organists of his day, and the preludes, fugues, concertos, chorale preludes and trio sonatas he wrote for "The King of Instruments" became jewels in the organ repertory crown even as his ink was drying on the page.

In the second half of his recital yesterday afternoon at the Baltimore Museum of Art, pianist Mark Markham equaled a world record. His performance of Liszt's gargantuan, sprawling Sonata in B Minor took less than 26 minutes -- most take about a half-hour -- beat by a nose those of the young Vladimir Horowitz and Arthur Rubinstein and equaled that of the redoubtable Martha Argerich.Markham's performance was not a flashy stunt but a profoundly musical return to the grand manner in which the B Minor Sonata used to be played.

The Emerson String Quartet is almost universally considered one of the finest ensembles of its kind.Its program Sunday evening at Shriver Hall could not be -- DTC emotionally and intellectually -- more challenging or more rewarding. It consists entirely of late string quartets by the two greatest masters of the genre in the last two centuries. The Emerson will perform Beethoven's Quartets in F major (opus 135) and in B-flat major (opus 130) and Shostakovich's Quartet No. 14 in F-sharp major (opus 142)

The Latin root of the overused word "inspired" means divine inspiration, and it is an adjective that came frequently to mind during Evgeny Kissin's piano recital Saturday evening at the Kennedy Center.Mastery in performing music means that a musician puts an audience in touch with the composer's thoughts with as few impediments as is humanly possible. Kissin's extraordinary playing, however, connected one on an altogether more exalted level. When this 23-year-old Russian plays the piano, the art of interpretation, a secondary act of creation, approaches the primary acts we associate with people such as Mozart.

During the last century, no musical form shook up the world more than jazz. It even influenced the visual arts, as evidenced by a vividly illustrated book called Jazz by Henri Matisse. That book provides the starting point for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's latest Explorer Series program, which promises a musical experience as boldly colored as the stenciled prints Matisse created using cutouts of painted paper. On the bill: Leonard Bernstein's Symphony No. 2, Age of Anxiety, premiered in 1949, two years after Matisse's Jazz was produced; Michael Torke's Bright Blue Music, a kinetic work from 1985 that suggests an aural version of a Matisse piece; and Leopold Stokowski's prismatic transcription of Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor.

After a bumpy - make that rainy and muddy - start to its outdoor concert season at Oregon Ridge early last week, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra opened its indoor Summer MusicFest in the safety of Meyerhoff Symphony Hall Friday night. The program, also presented the night before at the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda, was billed as "The Best of Baroque." It was nothing of the kind. Not an unadulterated note of Bach or Handel or Vivaldi to be found. Better to have called it "The Best of Big Band Baroque," since most of the concert held full-orchestra, larger-than-life transcriptions of music originally written for smaller forces.

During the last century, no musical form shook up the world more than jazz. It even influenced the visual arts, as evidenced by a vividly illustrated book called Jazz by Henri Matisse. That book provides the starting point for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's latest Explorer Series program, which promises a musical experience as boldly colored as the stenciled prints Matisse created using cutouts of painted paper. On the bill: Leonard Bernstein's Symphony No. 2, Age of Anxiety, premiered in 1949, two years after Matisse's Jazz was produced; Michael Torke's Bright Blue Music, a kinetic work from 1985 that suggests an aural version of a Matisse piece; and Leopold Stokowski's prismatic transcription of Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor.

WASHINGTON - Soon after arriving in the capital, Rob Klish heard the news about the city's Code Orange terror alert. Though his family trip took six months to plan, the upstate New Yorker thought about turning back. "If we'd known, maybe we'd have changed our plans," said Klish, 35, a computer services worker from Morrisville, N.Y.: He might have taken his wife and two kids farther west to avoid the heightened terror warning. Instead, he is preparing for even more adventures in color-coded anxiety with the trip's next stop.

Joseph Marrow of Ellicott City considers himself an "organ nut." So when he heard about yesterday's Baltimore Bach Marathon - 7 1/2 straight hours of preludes, fugues, concertos and other pieces by German composer and organist Johann Sebastian Bach - he had to be there. "An organ can reproduce sound in a way that, I think, no other instrument can," he said, paying particular homage to the low notes that can make your insides shake. Hundreds of fans of organ music, Bach or both attended the annual marathon held from 12:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. at St. David's Church in Roland Park.

Johann Sebastian Bach cast a giant shadow over every musical genre he touched.His masses and cantatas still define for us the essence of sacred song. Pianists and harpsichordists denied access to his inventions, partitas and toccatas would think life not worth living, while Bach's orchestral suites and instrumental concertos bristle with the energy of the baroque style.But the most monumental Bach compositions of all might be the ones the master crafted for his own use.Bach was one of the greatest organists of his day, and the preludes, fugues, concertos, chorale preludes and trio sonatas he wrote for "The King of Instruments" became jewels in the organ repertory crown even as his ink was drying on the page.

The Emerson String Quartet is almost universally considered one of the finest ensembles of its kind.Its program Sunday evening at Shriver Hall could not be -- DTC emotionally and intellectually -- more challenging or more rewarding. It consists entirely of late string quartets by the two greatest masters of the genre in the last two centuries. The Emerson will perform Beethoven's Quartets in F major (opus 135) and in B-flat major (opus 130) and Shostakovich's Quartet No. 14 in F-sharp major (opus 142)

WASHINGTON - Soon after arriving in the capital, Rob Klish heard the news about the city's Code Orange terror alert. Though his family trip took six months to plan, the upstate New Yorker thought about turning back. "If we'd known, maybe we'd have changed our plans," said Klish, 35, a computer services worker from Morrisville, N.Y.: He might have taken his wife and two kids farther west to avoid the heightened terror warning. Instead, he is preparing for even more adventures in color-coded anxiety with the trip's next stop.

Joseph Marrow of Ellicott City considers himself an "organ nut." So when he heard about yesterday's Baltimore Bach Marathon - 7 1/2 straight hours of preludes, fugues, concertos and other pieces by German composer and organist Johann Sebastian Bach - he had to be there. "An organ can reproduce sound in a way that, I think, no other instrument can," he said, paying particular homage to the low notes that can make your insides shake. Hundreds of fans of organ music, Bach or both attended the annual marathon held from 12:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. at St. David's Church in Roland Park.

In the second half of his recital yesterday afternoon at the Baltimore Museum of Art, pianist Mark Markham equaled a world record. His performance of Liszt's gargantuan, sprawling Sonata in B Minor took less than 26 minutes -- most take about a half-hour -- beat by a nose those of the young Vladimir Horowitz and Arthur Rubinstein and equaled that of the redoubtable Martha Argerich.Markham's performance was not a flashy stunt but a profoundly musical return to the grand manner in which the B Minor Sonata used to be played.

The Latin root of the overused word "inspired" means divine inspiration, and it is an adjective that came frequently to mind during Evgeny Kissin's piano recital Saturday evening at the Kennedy Center.Mastery in performing music means that a musician puts an audience in touch with the composer's thoughts with as few impediments as is humanly possible. Kissin's extraordinary playing, however, connected one on an altogether more exalted level. When this 23-year-old Russian plays the piano, the art of interpretation, a secondary act of creation, approaches the primary acts we associate with people such as Mozart.