WQXR, New York’s classical music station, is doing 10 days of Bach, complete works or nearly (complete with Bach is a complicated question, as he wrote so much and arranged the works of others). The station’s festival is called Bach 360 and started on Bach’s 228th birthday, March 21st. I’ve been catching bits of it, including this haunting Duet (the first of 4). New to me, despite years of playing Bach first as a student and now as an amateur pianist. It’s a bit like one of his two-part inventions, and striking for how the frankly minimal melodic content emerges from the maze of counterpoint and yet is still so affecting.
A couple of other things on QXR if classical music is your thing, a story about “Bach in the Subways,” which is another birthday celebration.
And, of course, they noted the passing of the great Met mezzo Risë Stevens, putting up a podcast of a radio interview with her by George Jellinek from his much missed show, “The Vocal Scene,” in 1983.
A Few Reasonable Words 