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CD Review: On Fortepiano, Schumann that Rivals Golden Age Pianists

EMA Recording Reviews, News

American pianist David Hyun-su Kim’s historically informed recording of three familiar Robert Schumann masterworks—Papillons, Carnaval, and Arabeske—is brilliant artistry indeed. And his instrument is of special interest: a copy of an 1830s Graf fortepiano, made in 2013 by Rod Regier of Freeport, Maine, and based on an instrument given by Conrad Graf to Robert and Clara as a wedding present. Kim is sensitive to Schumann’s mercurial mood shifts, and he uses the fortepiano for sounds and effects that are hard to achieve on a modern instrument.

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CD Review: An Urgent ‘St. Matthew Passion’ for Our Time

EMA Recording Reviews, News

Pinchon and his superb singers and ensemble offer an immersive, all-encompassing experience. Throughout, they let Bach’s dance rhythms propel music and narrative. The conductor’s attention to relative weights and specific articulations adds a dimension of almost sensual physicality—the emotions expressed here are vividly embodied, not abstract prayers, What makes this interpretation a significant contribution to the vast Matthäus-Passion discography is the admirable balance it finds between dramatic, contemplative, and even architectural approaches, too often taken as polarities.

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Book Review: We’ve thought a lot about Bach. Time for ‘Rethinking Bach.’

EMA Book Reviews, News

This fascinating book—rich in historical and analytical detail—offers many surprising reevaluations of long-held beliefs. With essays ranging from consumer culture in Bach’s Leipzig and Bach’s humor to an outright dismissal of ‘Affektenlehre’ and heated questions of antisemitism, the book is always provocative, often controversial, and smartly argued.

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Opera Lafayette Connects Marie-Antoinette, Music, Slavery, & Revolution

EMA Features, News

Inspired by the woman who remains an icon and a cautionary tale over 200 years after her death, Opera Lafayette’s ‘The Era of Marie Antoinette Rediscovered’ will shed light on the French queen’s extraordinary education in music and dance, her early embrace of opéra comique, and her legacy as a champion of modern composers in pre-Revolutionary France. But the series goes further, exploring ‘progressive’ philosophies that were in direct opposition to the atrocities being committed against enslaved people on sugar, coffee, and tobacco plantations in the Caribbean, the source of much of France’s wealth.

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CD Review: Vivaldi Cantatas, Thrilling and Intimate

EMA Recording Reviews, News

‘Vivaldi: Cantate per soprano I’ is the first of two volumes dedicated to Vivaldi’s chamber cantatas for soprano, part of Naïve’s colossal Vivaldi Edition. This new recording of six cantatas, composed between 1718 and 1735, reveals the depth of Vivaldi’s ingenious ability to shape moods, timbres, and emotions. Italian soprano Arianna Vendittelli and Abchordis Ensemble, led by Andrea Buccarella, have imbued this music about love with their own sense of drama, daring, and intimacy.

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