This week's From the Top, hosted by pianist Peter Dugan, celebrates the various ways music has created community in the lives of the featured young artists. The episode features a strong number of ...

Happy Bach’s 331st birthday! To celebrate, we had a partita party with violinist Rachel Barton Pine. (What’s a “partita,” you ask? Listen and learn, my friends.) Rachel explains Bach’s sonatas and ...

Through his work with the innovative string quartet Brooklyn Rider and Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, violinist Johnny Gandelsman has established himself as a performer of wide-ranging interests and ...

Can classical music performance be controversial? Most often, this is true only when a performance departs from contemporary (or not-so-contemporary) conventional wisdom, which often relies on both a ...

If Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach wrote a dull piece of music, I've not yet heard it. And even if there is a workaday piece or two lurking within his 300 keyboard sonatas, you certainly won't find it on ...

Johann Sebastian Bach is possibly the most influential and sublime composer in history. Everyone from Mozart and Beethoven to the Beatles and Lady Gaga has paid him homage. During his life, however, ...

At first blush, Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin played on the humble mandolin might be akin to making a Rusty Nail with single-malt scotch. A successful performance will require, at the ...

Who needs a continuo? The Flautist has both melody and bass covered... You usually hear Bach's beautiful flute sonatas with a solo flute, and then accompanying basso continuo (harpsichord, chamber ...

It’s brave of Julia Fischer to tackle the Mount Everest of music for solo violin at the age of 21. The young German is up against some stiff competition, but she acquits herself well. The great ...

Right from the opening notes the listener is thrown. Instead of measured grandeur, the Adagio of the Sonata No.1 feels rushed and restless, with almost too much to say. Violinist Gil Shaham has taken ...