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Masaaki Suzuki: Beethoven – Missa Solemnis
by C. Michael Bailey
It's almost certain that there is a Baroque Music User's Manual issued to each new period-instrument/performance orchestra and conductor defining what pieces of music must be recorded. De rigueur are all of Johann Sebastian Bach's Orchestral Work and Choral Works, including complete Cantata Cycles like those recently completed by John Eliot Gardner with his English Baroque Soloists and Monteverdi Choir and Masaaki Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan. Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Christopher Hogwood, Roger Norrington, William Christie, Phillippe Herreweghe--and the list ...
read moreMie Miki: Das Wohltemperierte Akkordeon
by C. Michael Bailey
I wonder if Old Man Bach had much of a sense of humor. I wonder how he would feel about the myriad of ways his music, some of the most important composed in Western Civilization, has been treated and performed. It would be a safe conjecture to think of Bach's music as the supreme music organizing model to the time of his Well-Tempered Clavier Books 1 & 2. His music has been widely transcribed for other instruments and just as ...
read moreCarolyn Sampson, Marianne Beate Kielland, Makoto Sakurada, Christian Immler; Bach Collegium Japan, Masaaki Suzuki: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Requiem
by C. Michael Bailey
For some listeners and critics Masaaki Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan is an acquired taste. I have found no quibble with Maestro Suzuki and his fine band and chorus. They have recently completed a complete survey of Bach Cantatas, as well as a majority of Bach's major orchestral works. Suzuki himself has recorded the buck of Bach's keyboard music (on harpsichord, of course) and all of these endeavors bear an undeniable stamp of Ton Koopman, with whom Suzuki studied. ...
read moreMartin Frost / Goteborgs Symfoniker / Okko Kamu: Crusell: The Three Clarinet Concertos
by C. Michael Bailey
Clarinetists do not have an endless library of texts from which to choose the next project. The best typically cycle through the best of the repertoire (at least from the Eighteenth Century): Mozart, Stamitz (both Carl and Johann), Spore, Krommer, Stadler, Pleylel, and Weber. All eventually stop and take from the creative waters at the shrine of Swedish-Finnish clarinetist and composer Bernhard Henrick Crusell (1775-1838), the most significant Finnish composer before Jean Sibelius. It is proper that Swedish clarinetist Martin ...
read moreMartin Frost, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Peter Oundjian: Mozart: Clarinet Concerto and Quintet
by C. Michael Bailey
Clarinetist Martin Frost's recent Weber was exceptional, warranting an appraisal of his earlier Mozart clarinet music. It is difficult to overstate the cultural value of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto and Clarinet String Quintet. Both were composed late in Mozart's young life, the quintet published in 1789 and the concerto in 1791 (the year of his death). Both pieces were composed for Mozart's friend Anton Stadler (1753-1812), and were originally scored for the basset horn (also called a tenor clarinet) having a ...
read moreMartin Frost / Tapiola Sinfonietta / Jean-Jacques Kantorow: Weber: Clarinet Concertos and Quintet
by C. Michael Bailey
Whatever you do, do not believe that 18th Century clarinet music begins and ends with Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A major, K. 622. An unsurpassable piece of music, to be sure, but Mozart laid the groundwork for many composers for winds after him. One such composer was German early Romantic Carl Maria von Weber (1786- 1826, a distant relative of Mozart's wife, Constanze). Better known for his operas, Der Freischutz and Oberon, Weber did manage two clarinet concertos and a ...
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