Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Die Kunst der Fuge (The Art of Fugue), BWV1080

Iestyn Davies joins the Australian Chamber Orchestra for music by Bach and Pärt in a programme featuring distracting modern dance. 

The Art of Fugue is a puzzle that demands to be solved before it can be performed. An expansive arrangement for string quartet and wind quintet attempts to solve it at Lincoln Center.  

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra electrifies with spirited performances of Bach and Beethoven, while four violins delight in Bacewicz's lithe Fourth Quartet.

Daniil Trifonov gives Bach's swan song a youthful energy and a sense of adventure.

The Scottish Ensemble with guitarist Sean Shibe perform a thoughtful programme of ancient and modern Christmas-themed music in a candlelit St John’s Kirk.

Prelude – Skydiving from a Dream from Scottish Ensemble and Andersson Dance: mesmeric choreographed Bach and Lutosławski with a blistering performance of Beethoven’s Grosse Fugue played from memory and on the move. Thrilling, daring and exciting.

Imaginative Bach and an exciting new work by Dobrinka Tabakova played by the Amsterdam Sinfonietta with pianists Ferhan and Ferzan Önder.

The fugue made an interesting subject for the Brodsky Quartet’s concert at St Georges. The programme delved into the fugue’s cross over between eras, from Baroque, all the way to early expressionism.

Playing repeatedly in my mind as I walked home on 24 July was the spine-chilling orchestral performance of the "Dance of the Knights" from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet in the Franz Liszt Academy’s superb Solti Hall.

The Scottish Ensemble's seasonal concert by candlelight looks at J.S. Bach and those inspired by his music.  

Phantasm in an intimate, late night Art of Fugue for consort of viols. 

The eagerly awaited second Sydney concert in Angela Hewitt’s current Musica Viva tour began with the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D minor, one of Bach’s most popular individual keyboard works. Both the improvisatory first section and the fugal section proper make extensive use of notes not found in the D minor scale, hence the description “chromatic”, meaning “coloured”.

It is a sign of the times that a celebrated Bach interpreter like Angela Hewitt should have begun her recital with a series of arrangements of Johann Sebastian’s music.

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra made a welcome return to the Proms after two years’ absence (their last appearance was in the late night Prom in 2010), led by their youthful principal conductor Robin Ticciati, who has already been in the post for four years. They brought a programme showcasing the early 19th-century repertoire which Ticciati has recently been exploring with this orchestra.

Bach’s final work The Art of Fugue, left incomplete at his death in 1750, has long been famous for (among other things) not having specified its instrumentation. It’s written in open score – each line of music, or “voice”, is given a distinct printed line, making it hard to guess what instrument Bach actually had in mind to play it.

The energetic Holland Baroque Society presented a lively program juxtaposing works of Johann Joseph Fux and Johann Sebastian Bach this week. Evident from the start was the group’s overarching enthusiasm and passion for this particular repertoire. The atmosphere reflected the musicians onstage, full of youth and infused with a breath of new life.

Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge consists of 15 fugues (the last unfinished) and 4 canons, with no instrumentation specified - hence the subject of much discussion and controversy. The Fitzwilliam Quartet chose to play three of the fugues, beginning with the ‘simplest’, where the theme of the 14 completed fugues is presented.

Man soll aufhören, wenn‘s am Besten ist. Gemäß dieser Maxime beendet Sabine Meyer ihre beeindruckende Karriere.

Cuarteto Casals ofreció una versión inmensa de El arte de la fuga tanto técnicamente como en su concepción.

Le Festival de Froville-La-Romane a invité les pianistes et improvisateurs Jean-François Zygel et Hugues Leclère, qui se sont livrés à une joyeuse joute intitulée Bachmania...

El acordeonista Iñaki Alberdi y el contratenor Carlos Mena proponen una interesante revisitación del repertorio renacentista y barroco.

La Fondation Louis Vuitton ouvre ses portes au jeune pianiste Albert Cano Smit. Retour sur un récital inspiré dans lequel l'artiste met en miroir Bach, Ligeti, Beethoven, Scriabine et Schumann.

Ganz ohne das noch immer weithin übliche, omnipräsente Vibrieren eröffnete das Chiaroscuro Quartett faszinierende Einblicke auf die wahren Inhalte der Musik.

El clavecinista Ottavio Dantonte y el conjunto italiano Accademia Bizantina muestran su concepción de la obra maestra de Bach, El arte de la fuga, en la Sala de Cámara del Auditorio Nacional