Steven Baxter Recital Studio

As mankind keeps evolving, instruments keep evolving. But is it true that instruments have improved and become better? The instruments which Bach knew were different from what we now know. Bach knew all the good and bad points of his contemporary instruments, and he composed the pieces which are the most suitable for them. Instruments have been changed in conformity with social development. Therefore, we have to know these instruments and their performing customs in order to perform the music as Bach imagined. In this lecture, we learn the history of the development of instruments, wind instruments in particular, and the performance customs of the Baroque period.

Boris Kuschnir is Professor at the University of Music in Graz, and Professor at the Arts University of the City of Vienna. He is the 2018/19 Ong Teng Cheong Professor in Music at the YST Conservatory. In 2018, he served on the jury of the Singapore International Violin Competition.

The Art of Fugue marks the conclusion of Bach’s compositional career. In this presentation Associate Professor Daniel Herscovitch from The University of Sydney Conservatorium of Music discusses this work and its relationship to the other five major compositions of Bach’s final decade. He examines various issues raised by these works, some of these being genre, the implications of their titles, numerology, the forms in which they have come down to us and their place within the performance practice of the time. This presentation will challenge some of the assumptions of received wisdom and conclude by discussing various issues to be addressed in preparing a performance of The Art of Fugue on the modern piano.