Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | The Musical Offering (Musikalisches Opfer), BWV1079

Almost every June from 1989 to 1999, I visited the charming town of Feldkirch, in the Vorarlberg region of Western Austria, for the annual Schubertiade, originally founded in 1976 by the great German baritone Hermann Prey.

Jean Rondeau is now taking the French radio and concert halls by storm, quickly making a name for himself and his mastery of the harpsichord. 

Bach's Musical Offering with its intricate constructions may sound on the page like a dry exercise in contrapuntal wizardry but it dazzles the listener not just with its cleverness but with its soaring lightness and beauty.

Angela Hewitt, Julia Schroder and Andrea Oliva play J.S. Bach at Wigmore Hall in London, finishing with The Musical Offering.

For the second concert of its 2011-12 series, the Chamber Music Society of Fort Worth featured pianist Di Wu and flutist Nadine Asin in works by J.S. Bach, Max Reger, Haydn and Shostakovich. Although one work didn’t include piano (Reger) and the piano part to another was of secondary importance (Bach), Ms. Wu was billed as the primary guest artist.

Thus reads the dedication of Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto, written in 1935 to commemorate the short life of Manon, the 18-year old daughter of the famous architect Walter Gropius (founder of the Bauhaus) and Gustav Mahler’s widow, the complex socialite, Alma Mahler. The apparently enchanting Manon (described as “an angelic gazelle from heaven”) died after suddenly contracting polio.