Hello friends,

Welcome to our newsletter where we are very excited about this week's live stream of Carmen from the Salzburg Festival on Saturday (Mark already has his ticket and promises to wave to us!). We've also recent streams from festivals in Verbier and Pärnu to catch up on. 

Next Thursday sees the 150th anniversary of the first complete Ring cycle at Bayreuth, so our 'Three of the Best' feature has a Wagnerian slant. 

Mark, Elisabeth and Jo

The Bachtrack Insiders

Personal picks from our site

Mark Pullinger Editor ​​​​​​
Birdspotting with Messiaen

I really enjoyed editing Peter Quantrill's evocative review of Pierre-Laurent Aimard playing some late night Messiaen at the Salzburg Festival. The Catalogue d'oiseaux is a huge piano tome from which Aimard "picked out its sweeter cherries in an hour-long sequence". You can enjoy Aimard play five of Messiaen's birds in this 2021 Berlin recital. 

Elisabeth Schwarz Editor
Young Artists

Our editors are currently on the lookout for next season's most promising young artists. While you're waiting for our lists to be published in early September, why not take a look at our previous selection and see what the talents have been up to? We certainly all have a proud smile on our faces when we see their careers taking off.

Jo Johnson Head of Marketing 
Talking of birds...

(see Mark's pick above) ... I had the enormous pleasure of spotting what I thought was a hummingbird in my garden this week. In fact, there are no wild hummingbirds in the UK, and what I saw was actually a hummingbird hawk-moth, which is having a boom in sightings this summer because of our recent hot weather. Naturally I went looking for hummingbird representation in classical music, and came across this rather lovely tiny 1932 piano work by Amy Beach, which perfectly depicts the darting and fluttering of these miniature creatures.

Out and about

Our tips on what to see live in the UK this week

Russian Classics
Bristol Beacon
8th August
The BBC Proms are in Bristol this weekend. Adam Hickox and the Bournemouth Symphony brings Russian spirit with Shostakovich, Rachmaninov and Sofia Gubaidulina.

The Galloping Cure
Edinburgh Festival Theatre
9th, 11th & 12th August
Scottish Opera presents a bold new opera for the opioid age, a haunting allegory for a crisis that has become a worldwide epidemic. Score by Missy Mazzoli, libretto by Royce Vavrek and directed by Tom Morris.

Dudamel and the LA Phil at the BBC Proms
Royal Albert Hall, London
11th August
The Los Angeles Philharmonic returns to the BBC Proms for the first time in over two decades. Pastoral peace meets infernal horrors in two vividly descriptive orchestral classics.

Venice Baroque Orchestra
Queen's Hall, Edinburgh
14th August
The Venice Baroque Orchestra and its founder-director, Andrea Marcon, highlight the variety of Vivaldi’s virtuoso works for soloists and orchestra.

track bach: Click on Johann Sebastian to find upcoming events, read recent reviews or articles, or watch streams of the composer we owe our name to.

Photography credits:
Carmen © SF | Thomas Aurin, Yunchan Lim © James Hole, Rudolf Buchbinder © Kaupo Kikkas, Barbara Hannigan © Cyrus Allyar;
Bayreuther Festspielhaus © Meike Kratzer;
Phelim McDermott in Tao of Glass © Johan Persson, Philippe Sly (Saint François d'Assise) © SF | Monika Rittershaus, Das Rheingold © Enrico Nawrath | Bayreuther Festspiele;
Johann Sebastian Bach © Public domain