In recent years, there’s been so much new information on J.S. Bach’s six cello suites that it can be hard to keep up. A new book is not only the newest (and therefore the most up-to-date) entry in the long catalog of Bach suite studies, it is also outstandingly comprehensive in scope. 

Early musicians often do wildly creative things with old music, and a really good arrangement can reveal qualities that were unheard in the original. Tina Chancey, with help from friends, gets deep into the weeds: ‘Even an extreme appropriation can work, but you have to own it.’

Two esteemed ensembles, two recordings, a new double-disc set. Almost a decade in the making, Ensemble Peregrina and Ensemble Gilles Binchois team up for ‘Summa Leticia: A Survey of Nova Cantica in France, c. 1100’ — music that was radical in its day and, for us, is loaded with such ambiguity that this repertoire is infrequently performed.

A music-theater cabaret — reimagining a 1970s fantasy on gay freedoms in a society not ready to accept it — premiered in Europe to acclaim and just arrived in New York. Baroque instruments help create a soundworld where, ‘paradoxically, historical instruments bring a quality of timelessness.’